Was this Viince Russo's best work?

[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by CSL [COLOR="White"] He's in the Benoit mould, superworker with a black hole when it comes to charisma. (...) I think people remember the Team Canada stuff a bit too fondly for the most part because he was a net darling that was thrust into a prominent position for a while and the whole winning 3 belts in as many appearances schtick. Those are the only things people ever mention: the belts and 'If I could be serious for a minute'. And despite the catchphrase getting over, the promos were nothing special, far from bad but nothing special. It was nice that he had something to do and something he could do well. But notice that his most successful career periods involve other people (ie Team Canada, Impact Players, Unamericans etc)

Originally Posted by Fox I understand your point of view, but I still disagree. Lance Storm and Chris Benoit were not in the same mold. Benoit tried to do the "serious guy" gimmick as a heel, but even then he was uninteresting and unentertaining. Lance Storm pulled it off in spades and was the best thing going in WCW at the time. He was the boring, arrogant, cocky Canadian guy who made people mad because he was actually GOOD in the ring. He talked shit on the US and his opponents, he did it in this super serious manner, and then he made bitches tap out. (...) I disagree that he was only good as a part of a group. Team Canada was just back up; Lance was the focal point. And he had great matches with a few different people - not just General Rection.

@CSL - While I *sort of* agree with the "Benoit mould" comment, the fact that WCW made a star out of Dean Malenko and Bill Goldberg shoots that argument in the foot. Also, think about how long in WWE that Benoit got to come into his own to go from bland to "quiet intensity". Bret Hart was arguably just as bland (hell, Anvil had the charisma of that tag team), he just had the fashion sense to adopt pink to make him memorable. As for the group thing, he got help from Team Canada in the form of help and beatdowns, but rarely tainted victories. That, also, was part of the gimmick. Like Fox said, he was good at what he did, TOLD you he was good at what he did because he was from Calgary... Alberta, Canada, then proceeded to SHOW everyone he was good at what he did. Just because he didn't have the mic swagger and voice inflections of someone like Edge doesn't mean it wasn't working.

More on topic: anybody remember the other "powers to be" promo Piper did? I don't remember what day or show, or who he was even talking to, but it was in that wheelhouse of the topic starter MAC posted with Russo doing the whole off camera gimmick with "Standards & Practices" standing guard in front of his desk. I do remember it was a backstage promo, and I believe it was the last appearance of Piper. Like this one, to me, it was kind of one of those "wow" moments.

[CSL]

Originally Posted by Fox I understand your point of view, but I still disagree. Lance Storm and Chris Benoit were not in the same mold. Benoit tried to do the "serious guy" gimmick as a heel, but even then he was uninteresting and unentertaining. Lance Storm pulled it off in spades and was the best thing going in WCW at the time. He was the boring, arrogant, cocky Canadian guy who made people mad because he was actually GOOD in the ring. He talked shit on the US and his opponents, he did it in this super serious manner, and then he made bitches tap out. Say what you want about "that's the only gimmick he could pull off," but any good wrestling promoter (Paul Heyman especially) will tell you that when you get a talent you find his strengths and you accentuate them. You make his character in the ring an extension of his real life persona, because anything else will just come off forced and unreal. Stone Cold is a redneck Texan who likes to drink beer and shoot animals - an extension of Steve Austin the man. Chris Jericho the Ayatollah of Rock n Rollah is just an extension of Chris Irvine the man. Lance Storm, "Can I be serious for a moment," is an extension of Lance Storm the man, and it worked perfectly. I disagree that he was only good as a part of a group. Team Canada was just back up; Lance was the focal point. And he had great matches with a few different people - not just General Rection. Plus, he had the sweet ass finisher with his backwards rolling single leg Boston crab, and also had one of the best superkicks in wrestling. Say that he was never meant to be a main eventer if you want, but with the amount of heat and interest he was drawing while in Team Canada, I don't see why he couldn't have kept that momentum rolling and eventually been a World Title contender in the same ranks with DDP, Booker T, Jeff Jarrett and Kevin Nash. It just didn't come to fruition. And it's not his fault he was saddled with nothing but bullshit in the WWE. Like I said, given the chance, matches against the great technical guys in the WWE would've been absolute show stealers. The very thought of Lance Storm versus Kurt Angle makes me hard.

This still comes across as you marking for the gimmick and Storm himself. From a strictly critical p.o.v, he did 'well', 'it wasn't bad', it was 'pretty good' etc. The average fan, the 98% that don't post on the internet don't get mad because of a heel actually being good in the ring. They get mad because the heel insults them and then beats their favourite wrestlers. Not how good the match was. And of course the best gimmicks are extensions of real life personas but check out Austin as a pretty boy from Hollywood, a self proclaimed superstar in ECW, Austin the coward during the invasion, Jericho the serious guy, Jericho the whiny heel etc. They were gold in all of those roles. Storm doesn't have that ability. Put him in a top line feud with one of them, give him a live mic during RAW with one of them and he's going to be 'exposed', he's going to come off the same way a Benoit did in those situations, if not worse because he doesn't have the intensity schtick going on. It's not even completely that that hurt him, it's the lack of ability to be in a vignette and do a convincing job, the lack of presence, the facials, the little things. Even as a guy that is supposed to be straight-laced and boring you need a certain amount of character and personality to take that to the 'next level'. Which Storm never had.

Quite obviously Storm was the main part of the group. But there were guys there to take the focus off of him. The heat he was drawing appeared to come from the catchphrase, which is fine for a while but it hardly was going to carry him to a world title. And I dunno, you're talking like he had Vickie Guerrero heat or something. Which just wasn't the case. He was a heel and he was over to an extent. It wasn't white hot or anything. And it's okay brushing it off as 'it just didn't come to fruition' but if WCW would have seen him as a potential champion, if he was as over as you think he was, they wouldn't have hesitated to push him to the moon, especially with the state the company was in.

And lol, who's fault was it that he was 'saddled with bullshit' in WWE? Do you think if Steve Austin, The Rock, Chris Jericho etc were lumbered with the same stuff that they wouldn't have done a lot better? Like I said, in a perfect world, Storm would have been a huge star off the back of his ability alone. But that's not how it works in wrestling. I fail to see how Paul Heyman and the booking teams of WWE and WCW can see this and pretty much 'proved' (not exactly the right word) this but some people on the internet can't. The history pretty much speaks for itself.

Originally Posted by Tom Guycott @CSL - While I *sort of* agree with the "Benoit mould" comment, the fact that WCW made a star out of Dean Malenko and Bill Goldberg shoots that argument in the foot. Also, think about how long in WWE that Benoit got to come into his own to go from bland to "quiet intensity". Bret Hart was arguably just as bland (hell, Anvil had the charisma of that tag team), he just had the fashion sense to adopt pink to make him memorable. As for the group thing, he got help from Team Canada in the form of help and beatdowns, but rarely tainted victories. That, also, was part of the gimmick. Like Fox said, he was good at what he did, TOLD you he was good at what he did because he was from Calgary... Alberta, Canada, then proceeded to SHOW everyone he was good at what he did. Just because he didn't have the mic swagger and voice inflections of someone like Edge doesn't mean it wasn't working.

What? Benoit was a star also. He had a monstrous physique and was quite possibly the best wrestler on the planet. He was just about the only guy that would have made it to the World title based off those attributes alone. He was never going to be a full time headliner though, which is exactly what we saw happen. Storm wasn't as good as Benoit and didn't have the same physique nor the intensity.

Dean Malenko had one shit hot year where he was part of a feud involving Chris Jericho making him look like a billion dollars. Fuck, Jericho carried the feud even with Malenko not appearing on TV for weeks at a time. People wanted to see Jericho get killed. He could have been feuding with a bin bag and he'd have got it over to the level of Malenko. That's not to do Malenko a disservice. He was an excellent wrestler, his quality of match was on par with anybody. But he was small and quite bland. He was never going to go above that role. And history proves that.

I have no idea why you mentioned Goldberg. Bill Goldberg's only problem was how inexperienced he was. Everything else he fucking nailed, hence him being the biggest star on earth at one point. No idea why you mentioned Bret. Bret is light years ahead of Storm and Benoit in the personality/promo department. I still see this from time to time, 'Bret was bland' etc. He's no Austin or Rock on the mic but he's as good as others and better than most.

And regarding the last part, I didn't say it wasn't working. I said he was never going to be 'star'. And the history pretty much speaks for itself.

[Fox]

Originally Posted by CSL This still comes across as you marking for the gimmick and Storm himself. From a strictly critical p.o.v, he did 'well', 'it wasn't bad', it was 'pretty good' etc. The average fan, the 98% that don't post on the internet don't get mad because of a heel actually being good in the ring. They get mad because the heel insults them and then beats their favourite wrestlers. Not how good the match was. And of course the best gimmicks are extensions of real life personas but check out Austin as a pretty boy from Hollywood, a self proclaimed superstar in ECW, Austin the coward during the invasion, Jericho the serious guy, Jericho the whiny heel etc. They were gold in all of those roles. Storm doesn't have that ability. Put him in a top line feud with one of them, give him a live mic during RAW with one of them and he's going to be 'exposed', he's going to come off the same way a Benoit did in those situations, if not worse because he doesn't have the intensity schtick going on. It's not even completely that that hurt him, it's the lack of ability to be in a vignette and do a convincing job, the lack of presence, the facials, the little things. Even as a guy that is supposed to be straight-laced and boring you need a certain amount of character and personality to take that to the 'next level'. Which Storm never had. Quite obviously Storm was the main part of the group. But there were guys there to take the focus off of him. The heat he was drawing appeared to come from the catchphrase, which is fine for a while but it hardly was going to carry him to a world title. And I dunno, you're talking like he had Vickie Guerrero heat or something. Which just wasn't the case. He was a heel and he was over to an extent. It wasn't white hot or anything. And it's okay brushing it off as 'it just didn't come to fruition' but if WCW would have seen him as a potential champion, if he was as over as you think he was, they wouldn't have hesitated to push him to the moon, especially with the state the company was in. And lol, who's fault was it that he was 'saddled with bullshit' in WWE? Do you think if Steve Austin, The Rock, Chris Jericho etc were lumbered with the same stuff that they wouldn't have done a lot better? Like I said, in a perfect world, Storm would have been a huge star off the back of his ability alone. But that's not how it works in wrestling. I fail to see how Paul Heyman and the booking teams of WWE and WCW can see this and pretty much 'proved' (not exactly the right word) this but some people on the internet can't. The history pretty much speaks for itself.

I'm failing to see what your point is in all of this. That I'm a mark for Lance Storm and that his work in WCW wasn't all that I'm suggesting it to be? That he's only an "internet darling" and is only over in our minds, as if the reality of his work is somehow muddled in our brains because we are "internet fans"?

I believe you are undercutting Lance Storm to a terrible extent. Your comparisons with the work of guys like Steve Austin and Chris Jericho aren't fair because those are two of the greatest wrestlers of all time, and even they've had some rough patches where the gimmick they were given just didn't work, no matter how talented they were. Look at Austin as the "Million Dollar Protege." That didn't set the world on fire by any means. Look at Chris Jericho's most recent big return with the short hair and glittery vest - he was pretty boring and bland as fuck until he turned heel and started his feud with HBK.

Your comment about "if WCW really saw him as a potential world champion" is poorly stated as well. Since when did WCW EVER recognize their potential world champions? How many times did they fuck themselves by letting guys go or wasting their talents in meaningless gimmicks and storylines? Foley, Austin, Eddie Guerrero, Benoit (yes, he was champion, but FAR too late), Jericho, etc, etc. Just because WCW never made Lance a main eventer doesn't mean that he didn't have the potential to be one, and it doesn't mean that his odds of succeeding at such were not great.

And you're asking me if I think Stone Cold and Chris Jericho had been saddled with meaningless feuds, little to no airtime, and the extremely over face-GM coming out to their matches and getting the crowd to chant "boring" if they would've gotten over with that or done better than Lance did? Fuck no I don't. How the hell do you work with that? What did Stone Cold coming out and chanting "Boring" and taking naps on the stage during Lance's matches accomplish for Lance Storm other than embarassing him and making him look bad in front of the audience? Did Lance ever get retribution? Did the angle ever go anywhere that was beneficial for Lance Storm? Or did he just become a retarded comedy character who tried to dance in the ring to be "entertaining", and then jobbed out shortly after? How the fuck do you work with that and "make it better"? A wrestler can only do so much with what the writers give him; at a certain point its up to creative to take the storyline in a certain direction.

Had the storyline gone to Lance getting super motivated to prove that he doesn't NEED to be entertaining because he's a vicious and amazing wrestler, had he beaten up Stone Cold backstage or started winning matches and cutting promos about "Screw you, Stone Cold! I'm ten times the wrestler you ever were and I prove it in this ring every single night!" then I could see it going somewhere. But that angle led to Lance Storm becoming a comedy character, which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of creative playing to a man's strengths.


Bottom line, we should just agree to disagree. I believe Lance Storm had the potential and skill to be a top guy in the WWE, and that he was never given the chance, and I think that his successful and well remembered stint in WCW with Team Canada and the triple title win is proof of that. You seem to believe that in the WWE he accomplished all that he could've possibly accomplished and that it's his fault for not having certain traits - and that it is of no fault of the creative team. Fine.

I still hold that if we had gotten to see matches like Lance Storm VS Kurt Angle, VS Shawn Michaels, VS Chris Jericho, VS Chris Benoit, VS Eddie Guerrero, VS CM Punk, that Lance would've gone down in WWE history as one of the best in the ring. But it didn't happen. Whatever.