Lance Storm makes a plea to veteran wrestlers who talk down to younger talent

Lance Storm is back on Figure Four Daily with Bryan Alvarez to discuss some of the big wrestling news from the past week.

Storm reviewed Impact Wrestling and AEW Dynamite and he gave his thoughts on wrestling belts. He also made a plea to veteran wrestlers who tend to talk down to the younger wrestlers. Storm noted that he’s seen some younger wrestlers blow off advice from veterans but he can understand why that happens some of the time because some veterans will talk down to the younger talent in a condescending way.

Storm said, “A couple years ago, I really noticed a lot of younger generation guys openly being disrespectful to veterans when the veterans gave advice. I thought that sucks. But then I’ve noticed more and more that there are a lot of veteran guys, my generation and older than me, that give the advice in such a demeaning, derogatory manner that I can see why the younger generation are disrespectful. This a real minor case of it, but I saw a tweet, and I won’t name who it was because the guy who said it, I have a lot of respect for, but there was a clip of Bret and Austin wrestling. There were short clips of Bret and Austin with fundamental wrestling. He tweeted it out, and I’ll change the wording but he wrote, ‘Hey, no stupid dives. No stupid flips, yet this is really great. Look at the basics and look at the fundamentals.’

I thought to myself, why did you need the negative? It is good advice. This is great fundamentals. You can tell a great story and get people invested in this, but as soon as you start with, ‘Hey don’t do your stupid s**t, look how great this is”, all the people that might need the advice or could heed the advice of, man, here is some really great basic wrestling that could really work, are just going to turn it off. I’ve seen it a lot. We don’t need to name names. I think most people know a lot of the people who will do it. They are smart people who have valuable information to be relayed, but by belittling and saying it derogatory, it reminds me that there are two things you need to be a good teacher. You need to have the knowledge and something worth teaching, but you need to have the ability to relay it to the student in a manner by which they will listen, absorb, and learn. I think many of us from an older generation need to remember that if the goal is to better the industry and have people learn, maybe we need to teach in a more respectful manner in doing so. Then maybe those that listen will be more respectful to it.

Again, it may be a chicken and an egg thing. I don’t know whether if first it was a green guy saying, ‘Ah, f**k you, you’re bitter.’ Or maybe it was an old bitter guy saying, ‘Ah, you dumba** stupid kids.” But, for the goodness of everybody, I think we need to do better. I think as part of the older generation, I think for the sake of a good start, we could be the better man and start the ball rolling by being more respectful and not just burying everybody because they do a flip or burying somebody because they do too many spots. I see it when I do seminars. It seems like the mentality is to sit in a headlock for 20 minutes and tell a story or do 1,000 dives. There’s a middle ground here. It’s 2020 and fans want some spots. They want some dives. They want some cool s**t.

AEW is a perfect example of that. There is a lot of cool s**t on that show. Fans want to see this. If the people in the older generation want a little more psychology, well let’s meet them in the middle. Don’t tell them to not to do the s**t, but maybe point out how the stuff can be done and might garner a better reaction. I think being more respectful and giving advice in a manner that’s not demeaning and degrading that people would be more apt to take it. I think both generations can benefit from the other. I think if you are a student looking for advice, to tell them not to do dives and high spots is not good advice. Maybe we need to give good respectable advice and respectful advice and if they are going to do 15 dives, maybe we can say instead of 15, maybe do 10 and put some psychology behind it and it can mean as much. I think everyone can do better and I think my generation and older can step up and be more professional because it seems to be that the older generation thinks the younger generation isn’t professional and respectful enough and perhaps leading by example would be a means to which to achieve that.”

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