The Voice of Wrestling radio show had Lance Storm and the Sandman live this week and you can hear the show in its entirety by clicking below. The following is a detailed recap of the Lance Storm interview and Sandman’s recap will be out later this week. Storm joined Chris Cash and temporary co-host, Paul Szmal, and discussed his recent fall-out with an Independent promoter who falsely promoted Lance, leaving WWE, his new training school, and what he thinks of Internet writers, dirt sheets, and the “smart marks” of today.
The Voice of Wrestling airs every Monday night from 7-9 EST, leading into Raw. The show is hosted by Chris Cash and features Jeff Dockem. Kevin Kelly joins the broadcast each week for his segment “Plan B” and gives his open, honest opinions about today’s hot topics. Dr. Tom Prichard also hosts his weekly segment, “The Truth”, where he is asked to school listeners on one issue in professional wrestling – typically the biggest story of the week. In addition to their contributions each week on the show, both men join a host of other wrestlers and wrestling personalities in our forums where they answer fan-submitted questions on a very regular basis. Others that are active on the forums include D’Lo Brown, April Hunter, Matt Morgan, Barry Buchanan, Colt Cabana, and more are coming very soon. To visit the forums, click the link below.
To Listen to the Interview: Click Here! To Discuss the Interview: Click Here! To Visit Lance Storm’s Site: Click Here!
Conversation began with Lance giving more details on the promoter that falsely promoted him on his shows. Lance said that he agreed to do a few appearances around Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lance said that it was the part of the world where he was most over. “I have no idea why. Whenever we did house shows up there, it’s like the whole building was just going insane for me”. This was ultimately the reason Lance wanted to go back to that area.
However, once the agreement was made, Lance never received his travel and he contacted the promoter to say that if he didn’t receive it soon, he would assume that the guy wasn’t bringing him in and that he would take active measures to inform people he wasn’t coming. After the promoter emailed he back explaining how backers pulled out and he was going to cancel the shows. “It turns out he was still running the shows and still advertising me,” Lance said, “so I got a little bit upset, said some choice words for him in a commentary on my website and let everybody know that I was not going to be there for the remaining shows. It’s sort of taken a life of its own”. Lance said that he’d heard the promoter ditched the ring truck and the ring and headed out of town with the advanced gate money on the second night, was caught, and possibly faces charges and jail time.
Paul Szmal asked if the “fly by night” promoters were a regular thing. “There are a few,” Lance responded, “there’s a hand full of bad eggs, you know, that are just trying to make a buck. The bait-and-switch of advertising people you don’t have booked isn’t that uncommon. Unfortunately, the little fine print of card subject to change gives shifty people the freedom to say what they want. It’s a shame because I know there’s a hand full of guys out there and there’s two or three legitimate promoters who have done okay business from an indie standpoint and you have a bad egg like this guy go out there and rip off a couple hundred people or whatever they had showing up…it leaves a bad taste in these fans’ mouths and they aren’t going to want to attend an independent wrestling promotion again”. Lance also discussed what he thinks the characteristics and qualities a person should have to be a successful promoter.
Talk converted to a more in-depth discussion when Chris Cash brought up Internet reporters and the opinion workers “in the business” have of those who print and produce the dirt-sheets that are in most cases, viewed in a negative light. After Lance first gave his definition of a “mark” – that being basically a fan – he gave his thoughts on the major reporters on the ‘net. (By the way, to refrain from promoting a ton of sites, I won’t name names or sites although specific people and places were brought up in the interview. Plus, Lance says which product he is a big fan of..but we can’t name names). Here’s what he had to say:
“I try to check out a few of the sites when I can, [but] I don’t spend a lot of time in it and I don’t read it like its the bible or anything…I think in general the boys don’t take criticism from outside the business very well. It’s like the people who are on Entertainment Tonight aren’t in the movie business; they just report on it”. Lance says that they’re “apart of the business, not actually in the business,” he continues saying whether they’re making a positive contributing to the business or not , “They talk about it and get people talking about it…so they do promote it to a certain extent, but I think they get the same backlash that movie critics get because I think people, in general, don’t like other people who they don’t see as their peers criticizing them”. Lance continues discussing this issue a great deal, including whether some of these top writers could ever book Raw creatively, if he respects them or not, and where exactly the h! eat comes from.. Check out the interview to hear it all.
Chris Cash started asking some questions submitted by the chat room, one being what Lance thought about the fans being goaded into chanting “boring” during his matches. “I think it was something that could have been done well and gotten over,” Lance said, “but unfortunately, it wasn’t followed up on properly. When it was first explained to me, it was meant to be akin to the ‘You Suck’ for Kurt Angle and obviously no one actually thinks Kurt Angle sucks. “I think had we better established the fact that it was my personality that was boring and then used the Goldust thing to try to give me a personality…I think you could have went somewhere with it”.
As far as where it could have possibly went wrong, Lance stated: “I think unfortunately they jumped on the wrong foot with the way Steve [Austin] came out during my match and was getting on the boring thing”. He thinks that if they would have tried to get over his wrestling ability and made the fans think more of “Oh God, please just shut up and wrestle”, it would have been more successful. He also thinks Jerry Lawler wasn’t on the same page with the writers during that angle. “It wasn’t obviously an important enough segment for them to sit down and explain everything out to them,” Lance continued, “and I think Jerry inadvertently took the angle in a completely different direction and that direction was down the toilet”. Lance continued by describing his frustration with the whole ordeal and what it’s like when a plan doesn’t unfold like everyone wanted.
A listener asked about the heat he had with JBL, assumedly due to him bullying the talent Lance had trained. “I don’t even know if that is the reason behind any heat I have with JBL,” Lance replied, “obviously there is some or was some at Wrestlemania when he had a few words with me, but he wouldn’t tell me exactly what the problem was. He had just heard I said something at OVW that offended him and thought it was BS. I couldn’t get him to tell me what it was that he heard I’d said, so I don’t really know what the problem is”.
Chris Cash joked that he had told all of them to watch out for him and it actually wasn’t too far from the truth. “I didn’t specifically say that. I did tell my guys that they need to watch their P’s and Q’s when they go up there and said some guys have a finer microscope than the others. He was one of the names that I’d mentioned”. Lance said he’d be happy to admit that he said those words to John’s face. “I don’t think that there’s too many people that would dispute that. If that’s what the heat’s from, then so be it. I think I can probably live out the rest of my life with any heat that’s there. I don’t really care that much.”
ECW was brought up and Lance was asked whether he thought it could last if brought back full time. “I don’t think that there’s a lot of money to be made in a full time thing,” he said, “I think ECW even its heyday was really hanging on and trying to balance the books. It would be great for fans…it’ll seem like a great success, but I think when you look at the money being put into promoting and getting a tv slot and paying the talent and everything else, I don’t think ECW on a regular basis would be a big money-maker for Vince. I really don’t”.
Lance ended the conversation with his thoughts on drugs in the business, referring to Buff’s interview last week and why, he has no sympathy for those that blame the business. He also discussed his new training facility in Canada that is set to start up in September. You can visit that site for more information by Clicking Here! You can of course visit his personal site as well at www.stormwrestling.com. Enjoy the interview with Lance Storm. The recap of Sandman live on the Voice of Wrestling will come out this week too, so be looking for that. Be sure to email your thoughts on this week’s show at VoiceofWrestling@aol.com. He encourages all feedback.
