Lance Storm appeared on this week’s episode of the Bryan and Vinny Show on WrestlingObserver.com to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, the former WWE/ECW/WCW star talked about the latest round of WWE talent cuts. Scarlett, Ember Moon, Taya Valkyrie, Oney Lorcan, Karrion Kross, B-Fab, Gran Metalik, Jeet Rama, Katrina Cortez, Trey Baxter, Lince Dorado, Nia Jax, Keith Lee, Eva Marie, Mia Yim, Harry Smith, Zayda Ramier, and Jessi Kamea were the names let go by the company.
“That’s the thing that everyone has to or at least should realize that they had over signed an insane amount. The fact that they’ve been able to cut, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 125 talent in the last two years, and the show still has lots of talent and bodies, and for the most part, the same. It just reminded me of when I went back. I signed on as a producer. When I got there, my first instinct was that there’s like 16 of us, why do they have so many producers?
My first thought was, I better get good at this job and be liked by talent because even then, which was pre-pandemic, they could cut a half dozen of us and it wouldn’t change anything here. There were TVs where there were two producers assigned to one segment. There would be many TVs where a producer would just do a match on Main Event. I’m like, there’s a lot of bodies here. I knew immediately that there was a chance that any of us were expendable. Then four months later, me and nine others got sacked, although that was more pandemic related. I think when AEW started, they (WWE) just started signing tons and tons of people, and now they’ve decided that they don’t need to hoard talent anymore, and on a whim, they will just cut people now, and they’ve cut a lot of people.”
WWE wanting to sign younger wrestlers for NXT 2.0:
“The thing is, with what appears to be the new direction with developmental of hiring people with zero background and train them from scratch, if you’re looking at several years in developmental, then maximize a good decade out of them on the main roster, you have to get them young. If you go with the thought process that some of these people were good workers who got over in other places when they got signed and still spent three or four years in developmental, if you want to a lot five years in developmental and get them to the main roster before they’re in their 30s or by the time they’re in their early 30s, you have to sign them young.”
Reports of WWE evaluating NXT talent every six months and if they don’t see improvement then the company will fire them:
“I think it would actually be more productive. When you have upwards of 120 people in developmental, they’re not calling up more than a half dozen a year, so it’s like, you have 20 years worth of talent at the PC, which means you have to figure on 75% failure rate pretty much. If they’re going to be more particular in their hires, focus really hard on the ones they want like a Bron Breakker and get them up, in a way, it would be more like what they had in OVW.”
