Chris Van Vliet did an interview with Lance Storm on Insight With Chris Van Vliet. The following highlights were sent to us:
On if he could still wrestle:
“I’m not in ring shape. I could still go but I’m not putting on tights and taking my shirt off in the ring anymore. I’m 54 coming up on 55. But the cosmetic ring shape I am not in. I think I could physically do the other part sure. But I have high standards.”
On his TNA role:
“Producer coach is sort of what I would consider it, used to be an agent job. But they like to call it producer now. So yeah, take what creative does and translate that to talent and then help coordinate all that on the headset.”
On his wrestling pet peeve:
“I think my biggest pet peeve, and I blame Vince, is what I consider just terrible, s*itty covers on pins. It was a couple of years, actually probably five or eight years ago. But Vince became obsessed you got to hook the leg, you got to hook the leg. And so everyone in WWE started doing this. And then I think everyone just copies it because that’s what they watch. But I would say nine out of ten pins today, the person goes towards the guy’s hips and grabs the leg and then rolls his back onto the guy’s stomach. And the guy making the pin is staring at the ceiling with no weight above the dude’s or female’s sternum, it’s like this is terrible. You’re not holding the shoulders down. It’s a terrible visual. Now there’s a lot fewer of them in TNA because I have been harping on the talent since day one. And it’s like, you can still hook the leg, but go to the shoulders, and you can just tell that everyone’s thinking leg because the person is laying there in front of them and they go towards the hips first. It’s like no, pin the shoulders, you can reach back and get the leg. And then the other thing that I harp on people is when you’re covering the shoulders, chest to chest, your head up, we can see your face. We’ve heard the expression Oh yeah, he always looks to the lights. He’s a loser. It’s a part of why she got over, but look at the way Rhea Ripley pins people. You know she won. And you know that she’s the boss. She’s in charge, she won this match.”
On indie wrestling:
“This is what I don’t like, because I don’t think it bodes well for learning. I think there’s too many people on the indie scene or trying to get noticed or whatever else. And it’s like, that’s all they’re worried about. We have to come up with this really cool, innovative creative spot so it’ll be giffable. And it’s like, well, that’s great. And Mike Bailey can have some really cool gifs, but Mike Bailey’s really f*cking good. He’s a great wrestler that really knows what he’s doing. So he has all the other parts and he does some really cool sh*t that’s giffable. But if you don’t learn the being really good part first, I think you end up getting more injuries, more danger, and less actual true art form.”
