Opinion by Marc Londo

"If I can be serious for a moment..." Sorry Lance, I just had to say it. I had to... Because, as much as it pains me to say it, Lance Storm hasn't given me many serious moments to ponder in a while. The passion is gone. I'm putting my Stormtrooper helmet up for bid on Ebay.

This isn't an easy thing to come to grips with! I never really watched much ECW, and I don't pay for tapes... so, I can't lay claim to a senior rank in the troopers... But, I was there from day 1 of his run in WCW, and I must say, Lance was a sight to see.

If there ever was a Total Package in WCW, it wasn't Luger, it was Lance. Whether he was flying with the best of the Cruiserweights or making pretzels out of the Heavies, Lance would mold his style around any opponent and come up with something totally unique for WCW at the time. He wasn't about pyro... and, if I can remain serious, he wasn't a catchphrase either. In WCW, Lance Storm was a warrior. Though a 'heel', Lance didn't have to resort to tricks. He just wrestled your boots off. He was the closest thing to Bret Hart since Bret Hart. And, that was his appeal.

If I can step out of all seriousness for a moment, and confess my markish sins, I fondly remember standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a scowl on my face. "I'm from Calgary... Alberta, Canada. And, what I do is wrestle!" Oh... to be a mark! It felt great! At that moment, I, or Lance... whatever, was invincible. I could take on all challengers, and my sole purpose was to bring honor to my country, while ripping the lid off the myth of American superiority ... revealing it all as nothing more than fancy entrances and quick one-liners. Do you smell what the Rock is cookin'? I was entertaining without having to be entertaining!

Oh wow... Sorry 'bout that. As you can probably tell, I miss my days of markdom. When Lance crossed over into the WWE, I had high hopes. An early I-C title run fed those hopes, but even then something wasn't right. He seemed like an empty shell. When J.R. would praise Lance as a "good hand", I would wretch. After all, one of the things I used to like most about a Lance Storm match was how detestable the announcers found him to be. It added to his arrogance of execution. Now, I was being told that he's a "good hand"... a worker... One of two guys throwing each other around for my enjoyment.

It was around that time that my enjoyment started to wane. Everything that I liked about the Lance Storm character seemed to fade. And, it wasn't really the fact that he started to get thrown around on Jakked and Heat now. The motivation that made the Lance Storm character great - in my eyes - seemed to have faded. That arrogance of being able to adapt to any style and pull back the curtain of "style over substance" was gone; and, in its place was some guy that stood for nothing and laid down for everything.

I hung in there though. I figured that it had something to do with this "dues" I keep hearing about. Only that went out the window when I started seeing guys like Orton and John Cena starting to get wins over the Kurt Angles of the world. I had just about lost all hope, when the UN-American's angle came about. "This is it!", I thought. Only, it was just a poor bastardized version of what Storm used to represent. They didn't stand for excellence in a sea of American gobbledygook! They were just a bunch of cowardly heels. Not only that, but Test, Christian, and Regal, would've never been allowed to run with the Lance Storm that I first became acquainted with! Maybe if they were lucky, he'd let one of them treat him to dinner at Cracker Barrel.

It's been awhile since I really marked out over something. While I'll always see Lance Storm as the class of the WWE, I no longer look forward to his matches. What's the point? With the lionshare of character development going into "testicles" and the Randy Orton injury updates, it's hard for me to see a light at the end of the tunnel for a certified arse kicker from Calgary... Alberta, Canada. That being said, I wish that I had 10 extra dollars a week. I get just about as much enjoyment from reading about the characters on NWA-TNA, as I do watching Smackdown.