This week’s episode of Figure Four Daily with Bryan Alvarez and Lance Storm was a Q&A episode with questions that were sent in by listeners of the show. Storm said he would be on next week with Dave Meltzer to discuss his thoughts on intergender wrestling so this week he avoided the subject.
Here are some highlights from this week’s F4D:
Storm was asked if he watched Talk ‘N Shop A Mania: “I did not. I try to not watch wrestling on the weekends. I have a wife who hates wrestling. To be honest and fair, Gallows and Anderson and everybody else involved, it is a credit to them that they made it very clear what Talk ‘N Shop A Mania was and I don’t think it should surprise anybody that it is not my cup of tea. I think I would have been one of the ones that didn’t like the tongue and cheek and goofiness. I didn’t watch and didn’t like Southpaw Regional Wrestling. I don’t like a lot of that kind of stuff so I didn’t watch it. That’s where I think it’s a credit to them that they made it very clear that they told you what the show was. If you enjoy this kind of thing, and there is a boatload of people that do, you are going to get a hoot out of this. Open up some beers, sit down, and laugh along with us. I don’t drink and I don’t particularly enjoy that style of wrestling so I didn’t watch. Those who did knew what they were in for and from all accounts, loved it because they let you know what it was going to be, you had expectations and they delivered on those expectations.”
Storm discussed the possible AEW signing of Rachael Ellering and if she is happy in real life that she appears to be on interviews and social media: “Yes she is. I don’t like telling people who they should sign. I think they should look at talent and sign people on their own without my endorsement. She is every bit as nice as you see. The old Minnesota nice is a shoot. I can talk for an hour and not come up with a single bad thing to say about Rachael. She is one of my best students and we are really close. I think she is fantastic. If they do sign her, fantastic. But, I don’t like the “she deserves it, sign her.” That happens with every single person that wrestles somewhere. I think that is crazy. I like to believe and hope that organizations look and see talent and sign them.”
Storm was asked: “If you were running a wrestling company, how would you have handled producing a TV show during the pandemic?” Storm responded: “I think the first thing I would have done is gone a little more old school wrestling in that I would have darkened the arena and lit up the ring more. I think I would have looked into piping in crowd noise and not drawn attention to the fact that no one was there. I would have tried to shoot it in a manner that you would have assumed the crowd was in the dark and you didn’t see them. Wrestling is, at the end of the day, and everyone hates the word, but fake. If we take that effort to convince people that the wrestling is real and use some of that and try to convince viewers that there are actually fans in the building, that would have been better. Now they managed to put some bodies in the crowd, that’s fine. But when there was none and it was dead silent, especially when the PC was lit up bright and you can see empty chairs, I didn’t think that was good.”
Drake Maverick asked Lance Storm to watch tapes of him. Storm was asked if he had time to do that: “I did. There was about a week or two when I realized I was getting paid and still sitting home. I wanted to be useful. I put out on Twitter that anybody under WWE contract that was interested in match feedback to DM me and I would review some of their matches and get back to them. Drake was one of the ones that reached out. There were a lot from NXT U.K. I think there were 3 o4 4 from NXT U.K. that I did that with. Few people from the main roster did. A couple of 205 Live guys did. I watched their matches and wrote them near a book. I’m really extensive. Everybody seemed really grateful. But I did with Drake. I don’t remember the match, unfortunately. It was after I did 6 or 10 of them that I got released. I no longer felt the obligation to earn my pay after that. I was happy he got his job back.”
Storm was asked his thoughts on WWE Raw Underground: “Nobody has brought up the point that I think is the issue. They created a really cool look. By having these, let’s say, way more violent, way more quick sudden big throws, takedown, ground and pound and KO’ing guys, it looked exciting. To me the issue is you debuted it with what I would consider a UFC knockout highlight real where there were 4 matches in under 2 minutes. That’s less than 30 seconds a fight. If this gets over, they are in real trouble because the suddenness and the violence of a 30 second first-round KO is great, but you have a 3-hour show to fill. If Dolph Ziggler does a great amateur takedown, a go behind, chokes this guy out, you say, Ziggler looked awesome. Yea, he did, but if he has to do a pro wrestling match on RAW next week and go 12 minutes, I think there is the real fear of what happened to badass Dolph that can beat a guy in 30 seconds? So, I think the double edge sword is if RAW Underground doesn’t get over, then it’s a failed concept and it doesn’t get over. If it gets over, what do you do? You can’t do a 3-hour show with 30-second fights. If you would have debuted with Chad Gable and Matt Riddle in there and done more of the Josh Barnett Bloodsport match where they had a more realistic, more violent, 8-minute match, then if it gets over, you start doing more of that. When you start with the greatest knockout reel of all time with 20-second finishes, I think you run the risk of anything else is going to seem long, slow, and dull.”
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