Lance Storm gives his thoughts on unions in wrestling, what Paul Heyman said to him on his last day in ECW

This week’s episode of Figure Four Daily with Bryan Alvarez and Lance Storm was a Q&A edition. Storm talked about unions in wrestling, his WWE run in the early 2000s, if he’s ever been in a shoot with someone who was inebriated, the perfect wrestling ring and tons more.

Here are some highlights:

Lance Storm talked about the ramifications of being in a union: “I think it’s a real complicated issue. Rocky Romero mentioned that if let’s say everyone in WWE joins a union, SAG or whatever. When you are in that union, you are only allowed to do union projects. If WWE is the only company working with that union, you’re not supposed to jump out of the union and do non-union projects. So let’s say that Impact and Ring of Honor and AEW also start working with the union and all those wrestlers start working with the union, that means if you work for any of those four companies, you can’t go work indies because those are non-union projects. I’m an apprentice level member of ACTRA which is the Canadian version of SAG. That’s something I found out once I did little stunt work projects and things and you pay extra money because you are not in the union to be part of these things. When I actually joined, one of the things is I’m not allowed to do non-union projects again. There was one I had to turn down. So it’s not as easy because all the local indies, that again, someone in Ring of Honor, assuming pandemic aside, and a lot of people in Impact, do indies and outside projects. Well, if you are part of the union, you may not be able to do those. I think it gets very complicated. I think the employee status issue would be a better one for wrestlers.”

Storm talked about leaving ECW for WCW: “It was ridiculous. When I negotiated to leave ECW and join WCW, one of the last conditions, I needed something in writing from Paul (Heyman) so WCW would feel more comfortable if they had it so I asked Paul for it. I signed a 30-day deal with Paul because he was panicked because people were jumping so I signed a 30-day deal with him. It actually expired a day before the Hardcore Heaven PPV that I lost to Justin Credible. I joked with Paul and said, you should have made that 31 days because I don’t think you realize it expires before the PPV. I joked but I said I’m not leaving before the PPV, so don’t worry. So whatever it was that I needed signed, Paul added in the extra day but also said that one of the things was I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone I was leaving until my deal ended. Other than Don Callis who I called from my hotel room in Atlanta when I negotiated the deal, I didn’t tell anybody. It was incredibly hard because that night at the PPV, Justin (Credible) was like are you staying or going? I said, no comment. It wasn’t until the match was over that I finally went to Paul and asked can I at least say goodbye to these people. He said, ‘yea, you can tell them now.’”

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