James Storm Reveals Why He Never Signed With WWE, Talks Mickie James Train Angle Controversy, Beer Money Name
James Storm recently sat down for an in-depth interview as the guest on the latest episode of the wildly popular INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet podcast this week.
During the discussion, the former TNA World Champion reflected on wanting to be a tag-team performer, being paired with Bobby Roode and the origins of the Beer Money name, why he never signed with WWE, as well as the Mickie James train angle controversy.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On wanting to be a tag team performer: “I did, and it’s funny, because a lot of people want to be that big single star and have all the glory and stuff. But I grew up with the Rock N’ Roll Express and watching Demolition and The Road Warriors. So I always wanted to be a tag team wrestler, and there’s an art to it. If you can get two really good tag teams together, I think, especially with four guys, they can put on a way better match than just a singles match. But at that time in TNA, and a lot of times in WWE now, it seems like the tag teams are just a second thought. That was really good with Beer Money, we kind of brought tag team wrestling to the front because it was us, then the Machine Guns and LAX, and then you bring in Dudley Boyz, Team 3D as well, and it was just all these teams now coming together, and now we’re main eventing these pay-per -views and stuff.”
On being paired with Bobby Roode: “We were coming to the end of our contracts, and I don’t think they really knew what to do with us. So Dutch, he was just like, ‘Just put them together. If anything, we fire them together.’ That’s how I got the Dutch was looking at it. So they put us together, and me and Bob was like, You know what? We’re gonna make the best of this. We’re gonna do what we can to it. The thing with Bobby is, whereas me and Chris had to rely on each other, me and Bobby was already kind of established, so we can just go out there and have fun and just act fools. So they had us as heels, and I made up some dumb merchandise that said Beer Money on it. So they slowly kept pushing the name Beer Money, but they were coming out with a toy line, so they didn’t want to put Beer Money on this toy line that was going to be in Walmart. Which I understand that.”
On where the name Beer Money came from: “So we were at the Bell House in Orlando, and I’m sitting there, and so it’s like me and Eric and Bobby and somebody else. I’m sitting there, and I’m like, feeling around like, oh God. I said, Well, I’m out of beer money now. Me and Bobby go, let’s try it. Then I said, we got to come up with something so stupid that people will boo us every time we do it. So that’s why we came up with the Beer Money suplex. That is what actually made us over every time we set up for it and we do it, and we go ‘Beer!’ ‘Money!’ We knew we were over when we go to England and we’re facing the British Invasion, and we’re the babyfaces, we were supposed to be the heels, but we had this whole match set up, and when Nick and them come out, they just get booed out of the building. Nick goes, ‘All right, well, I guess you guys are babyfaces now, we’ll take the roles on the heel.’ That’s when we knew that we were over.”
On why he never signed with WWE: “Man, it was a lot. Mostly had to do with my family. Had a little bit to do with money, which is not like they didn’t pay him a lot of money, so he’s not coming. It wasn’t like that at all. They gave me a contract, I went home and I got a call from Regal. He goes, ‘Hey, we definitely want to sign you.’ I was like, Oh, great. So I was going to sign the contract and all that stuff, and then he asked me, ‘Can you tighten up a little bit? Lose a little weight?’ I was like, Yeah. I busted my ass and I lost 20 pounds. I got in really good shape when I got back down there. Everybody’s like, Oh, my God, you look totally different. Because I always tell people, you give a man motivation, he’ll work his ass off if. So I did it, and then when I got down there, the contract had changed. They added 25 more dates, but the money didn’t move. I even told him TNA had offered me another contract to come back because they heard about me wanting to sign with WWE. I said, ‘Look, this is what TNA is offering me. I’m not trying to hold this over your head at all, because you don’t have to match this at all. I’m just saying this is what I’m willing to give up to come and work for this, but it has to be right.’ Because my wife, she wanted to have another child at the time, but she had to take the shots and all this stuff, so I was basically kind of giving that up as well, because I was going to be on the road a lot. We came to an agreement, and she was like, ‘Well, if they can just give you this, then you have my blessing to sign.’ Hunter is like, ‘I just can’t do it.’ I was just like, ‘All right, well, I’m sorry, my wife gave me permission not to sign, so I’m going home.’ Three days later, Canon Ceman called me. He goes, ‘Hey, man. Paul wants to know if he can call you.’ I was like, ‘What? Hunter?’ He goes yeah. I go, ‘He has my phone number. I just talked to him not too long ago.’ He goes, ‘Well, since you’re not signed, we had to go through the proper channels, and I had to make sure, you’re on a recorded line.’ I was like, whatever, yeah, he can call me. So he called me and I talked and he’s like, ‘Look, you’re not gonna be here long, because Vince loves characters and you know how to work, so you’ll probably be shipped off real quick.’ I was like, ‘Well, can you give what I was asking?’ And like I said, it was not much at all, and he’s like, ‘No, I just don’t have the authority to do that.’ I was like, ‘I’m sorry, man. I’m gonna have to say no.’”
On if that was a tough decision: “That was the hardest phone call I think I’ve ever had to get off the phone with a man. Usually I just hang up the phone. I was like, oh, man. Am I making the right decision? But in hindsight, I didn’t know at the time, but it was the right decision for me and my family at that time, because I was able to have my son that’s eight years old now, and everything. So I can’t imagine what if I would have taken that.”
On the Mickie James train angle: “The funny thing was, a lot of people don’t know it, I actually had cops come to my house to make sure, they thought it was legit. My brother, who was a detective at the time, he called me. He goes, ‘Hey, man, did you kill somebody on TV?’ I was like, bro, it’s wrestling. He goes, ‘That’s what I try to tell him.’ But there was this cop that had just started on the beat with him, so he was messing with him. He had that guy come to my door and ring the doorbell and ask me about all this stuff, and my brother sitting in a car just laughing his butt off. So I had to bring the cop in and put the episode on and show him it’s part of a wrestling angle. I was trying to, me and Mickie and Nick, all three of us are trying to tell John this is not a good idea to murder somebody on TV. I came up with a plan of having a flash of me, this is what would happen if she wouldn’t agree with me, like, I would push her off and she would die, you know, but they didn’t like that idea. I was like, All right, well, I guess I’m pushing her.”
