On a recent edition of the “Haus of Wrestling” podcast, Shawn Stasiak reflected on his match with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson on the post-9/11 episode of WWE SmackDown.
Stasiak lost to the then-WCW World Heavyweight Champion on the episode, which aired just two days after the 9/11 attacks. He said,
“I got to work with Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, that night. I was the Wile E. Coyote of the WWE, at the time, you know, the laughingstock and comical relief. It was just fun that I got to rub shoulders with Rock a little bit; I wish I would have had an opportunity to actually work a real program and, you know, develop, but the rest is history. It is what it is. It was bittersweet, you’re, on one end, you’re representing freedom and America, really. A very patriotic night, but it was depressing and sad.
Again, lots of fear and anxiety going on, but to work with Dwayne was really special for me, too. Again, I wish we had more time or more of an opportunity of working together, but just to have that moment. I was glad to be part of it. It was a stupid, goofy character, but at least it made people laugh, and it put smiles on faces, and it eased up some of the tension that we all felt. So I was I was happy to be part of that.”
On a recent edition of his “Franchise University” podcast, Shane Douglas recalled how Lance Storm managed to get over in ECW without an over-the-top gimmick.
Douglas discussed Storm’s match with Rob Van Dam at ECW Barely Legal 1997 and expressed his admiration for Storm’s ability to win over the crowd purely based on his wrestling talent. RVD defeated Storm at the event. He said,
“Huge respect for Lance. And I’ll tell you why. Lance, as you know when you watch him, he is pretty vanilla in character. There’s not a whole lot going on there in character … I’ve always said I am so thankful I was in [on] the ground floor of ECW because that would have been a really tough crowd to win over once they had gotten chugging.
“And Lance came in there, albeit without that over-the-top ‘Franchise’ personality or the Candido delivery or whatever, and he won them over, hold to hold to hold. Not an easy thing to do.”
