Lance Storm Recalls Working With Jim Cornette in SMW, Talks Criticism That He Lacked Charisma

Lance Storm recently discussed his experiences working with Jim Cornette in SMW and talked about Bruce Prichard’s claims that he lacked the charisma to be a huge star. Storm was a guest on the It’s My House podcast and you can see some highlights below:

On working with Cornette in SMW: “I really enjoyed it because I was a big fan of the Midnight Express I was a big NWA WCW fan. So, Jim Cornette and the Midnight Express was someone that I was a big fan of so then getting to come in and work a tag team program with Jim — he was managing the Heavenly Bodies at the time, not the Midnight Express — but it was still really cool in that regard. It was the only real traditional wrestling territory that I worked. It was like an old school territory where you did, you know TV once a month that was primarily squash matches and angles to hype the live events, and then you would do the 15 shows a month where you hit all the regular house show towns. And it was a very traditional old school territory so it was nice to experience that because when I broke in was really the start of the death of the territories.

“So I really enjoyed that, and I learned a lot. I think the biggest thing that I learned there was, you’re not doing the wrestling match for you, you’re doing it for the audience, because both Chris (Candido) and I, you know he was working in Mexico we both done a trip to Japan, I had just got back from Europe. We were trying to be that, you know, cutting edge new we got to do all this new stuff we got to do all this, and it’s like, that’s all great, but we were working, Harlem and Kentucky, and they weren’t seeing new Japan Junior Heavyweight style, they weren’t seeing Lucha Libre, so us just trying to do these great matches that we were marks for wasn’t what the audience wanted.”

On Bruce Prichard’s recent comments that he lacked the charisma to be a huge star: “I honestly believe this is the misnomer, of people getting worked or believing their own s**t. If you go back and watch my ECW stuff, no one’s gonna say I had a lack of personality or a lack of character. And in WCW, the particular character that I was doing was getting me very over in a very short period of time. When I got to WWE I was specifically told and instructed to have no emotion, no personality, and be a robot. I was specifically told that their vision for me was Sam the Eagle from The Muppets. And when I did promos in WWE I was constantly told to do retakes because you’re not flat enough, you’re not monotone enough we want you duller, and they would make me do. It’s possible that Bruce was never part of the conversations where they said I need to be flat. In which case then it’s you know Bruce is just not realizing that that was by design. And if he was part of those conversations he either forgets it or just decides it’s a better narrative to deliver it this way.”
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