Lance Storm
Lance Storm is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. This tribute is focussed on Lance's experiences in my country, Australia.
Global Warning
To Face or not to Face?
August 9th 2002
I was struck with an interesting dilemma today. It wasn’t really a new
question, I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I was struck with
a new side to the argument, which has perplexed me somewhat. The question, or
dilemma, if you will, is, should Christian and I work as heels or baby faces
here in Australia? This is the ongoing problem when you have a nationality-based
gimmick. As soon as you go abroad it changes the way your character is viewed.
The last time I was here (2-years ago with WCW) I simply did an anti-Australian promo and continued to work as a heel. I thought this was fair enough seeing that the main focus of my character was Pro-Canada and not solely Anti-US. The local crowd wanted to cheer me, seeing that American’s are more often than not heels internationally and as a Canadian I had the Common Wealth tie helping me out. I felt that the promo and my actions were consistent with my character so I had no problem with it. Things. However, are a little different this time round.
Our Character as it stands right now in WWE is solely Anti-American. We push the fact that “the rest of the World” hates America and we are slamming the US on behalf of the World, not solely Canada. Because of this I feel that we should definitely be faces in Australia. Now I don’t care one way or the other which side of the fence I work. I enjoy getting my butt kicked and being booed as much as I do kicking butt and being cheered, but character consistency is important, and just how much so, struck me earlier today. I figured that the office would want us to do a heel promo on Australia and work as heels. It’s just easier, especially when you are working guys who should be universal baby faces. We are working Billy Kidman and Rey Mysterio, who are definitely faces, and Rey being viewed as more of a Mexican wrestler, we shouldn’t even have a problem with him.
I was walking to the gym here in Melbourne and I was talking to a bunch of fans that are coming to the show on Saturday. They were saying how much they enjoy us putting it to the Yanks (Americans), and how they are looking forward to seeing us on Saturday. With the fans here being so into our gimmick and seeing us as baby faces, is it fair to just turn on them and to an Anti-Aussie promo? I would have thought no problem but do the fans not deserve to see us perform as we do on TV and in that same character? This is the root of my dilemma. Well not entirely mine obviously, as it won’t end up being my call, but the ramifications of this decision bother me.
With fans already disappointed about not getting to see Hulk Hogan is it fair to not deliver everything else as close as possible to what they are expecting? I guess my question is if a fan buys a ticket in hopes of cheering us on as we bash America is that fan somehow ripped off, if when he shows up we go out of character and bash him instead. When we were in Newfoundland last month, back home in Canada, we were HUGE baby faces. The place went absolutely nuts for us and it was awesome. I can’t help but think those fans would have been hugely disappointed had we came out and bashed them and worked as heels. They wanted to cheer us so bad, and thus deserved to. We delivered and both the crowd and us had an incredible time. Will the same be true here in Australia and are we ripping them off if we turn on them?
I don’t have an answer for this. I believe we should be faces, but is that what is best for the show? Rey and Kidman deserve to be faces too. We could do a baby face match I suppose but those are never as good and a face-heel match up. Let me know what you guys think on the comment board, especially if you are an Aussie attending the show on Saturday.
Cheers mate!
Lance