World Heavyweight Championship, Joe went on a storyline rampage and attacked referees, security and Booker T without on-screen mercy. Sting, who was also a face, then entered the arena and stopped Joe's assault. However, Joe gave Sting the middle finger and continued his assault on Booker T. This angered Sting to a point in which he grabbed Joe and hit him with a baseball bat, thus turning heel in the process, allowing Booker T to steal the World Heavyweight Championship belt from Joe. Following the event, Sting did not appear on TNA's primary television program TNA Impact! in a wrestling role or to explain his actions at the event. Instead, he was only seen standing in the rafters on each episode. As a result of Sting's actions at the event, a storyline within the company began that saw a possible alliance between Booker T and Sting. On the July 31 episode of TNA Impact!, Samoa Joe was brawling with Booker T, a baseball bat fell from the ceiling hanging by a wire; Booker T grabbed it and smashed Joe over the back with it. At TNA's August pay-per-view Hard Justice, Sting attacked A.J. Styles, an on-screen ally of Joe's, after Styles had defeated Kurt Angle in a Last Man Standing match. The reasons for Sting's actions were eventually revealed on the August 14 episode of TNA Impact!, in which he stated that he attacked Joe and Styles because they were not showing enough respect for veterans such as Angle and Booker T by doing what they did at the events. Sting, being a veteran of the sport himself, went on to say when he was Styles' and Joe's age, if he had a match with a veteran, he pinned them and walked away, not adding insult to injury by trying to end their careers, like Styles and Joe were trying to do. This sparked a rivalry between the three, which later involved Angle and Booker T. At TNA's September pay-per-view No Surrender, Sting announced that, at TNA's October pay-per-view Bound for Glory IV, he would challenge Joe for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship; later in the event during a match between Christian Cage, Angle, and Joe, Jeff Jarrett made his on-screen return to the promotion after not being seen in TNA since late May 2007, by helping Joe retain the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. Jarrett went on to Bound for