The Interactive Interview courtesy of http://www.WrestlingEpicenter.com with Lance Cade from 12/19/08
Hosts: Patrick Kelley, James Walsh, & Nick Noel
It is one week before the true grand-daddy of them all… No, I’m no talking about WrestleMania or Starcade but Christmas! To celebrate the festivities of the season, we bring you one of the brightest young stars we’ve seen come down the pike in years. It is rare that we can say and mean that we have always been positive about a wrestler on the show but that is the case with Lance Cade. And, in a rare turn of events, Lance Cade is also a fan of ours! How cool is that?
In this near hour long extravaganza, Cade talks about his entire career from training with the “Heartbreak Kid” Shawn Michaels down in Texas to his big break in the WWE all the way through his release and beyond. This is a very candid and educational interview with a young man who has already been to the top and, we are sure, will be there once again!
You can hear this interview right now at http://www.WrestlingEpicenter.com as well as well over 300 other top wrestling interviews compiled over the past 6 years. We have always done this at no expense and that will not change anytime soon. But, if you want to give back for our efforts, we do have a store where you can pick up some great stuff and also help keep us free. http://www.WrestlingEpicenter.com.
LANCE CADE:
– Lance Cade joins us on TII and admits to us right off the bat that he is a fan of the site & the show! He says that he reads the interviews and says “the site is really good”! Cade says he basically lives wrestling 24/7 so our interviews are a good way to pass time for a wrestling fanatic.
– Since leaving the WWE, Cade has had more time to spend with his family. He says that he was signed to a developmental deal with the WWE when he was 18 and had been with them for 9 years which didn’t leave much time with his wife & kids. Right now he is working for NWA Hollywood, is set to make appearances in Japan, and has rejoined Trevor Murdoch as a tag team which he’s really thrilled about.
– James mentions that Richie Steamboat will also be making appearances in Japan. Cade puts him over heavily and says “he’s identical in the ring to his father” and he puts over Ricky as the best babyface of all time. He also feels that it speaks volumes about Richie Steamboat and Reid Flair learning the ropes and going to Harley Race’s WLW because they both must realize that if they wanted it, they could immediately get a WWE contract like Randy Orton who Cade says didn’t even want to be a wrestler. It isn’t clear, however, if that was intended to be a negative shot at Orton or not.
– He was surprised that the Cade & Murdoch tag team worked so well. Originally it was supposed to be him & Kevin Fertig (Kevin Throne) and that many people liked the idea for the team. Tommy Dreamer called him up one day and told him he’d be working with Trevor as his partner one week before working with Fertig. He says that they clicked instantly. After a few weeks, he was asked which partner would work better for him in terms of in ring work and he picked Trevor.
– Cade says that the major plus to working with Trevor is that they could adapt to any team they faced and adjust to their style. He says they would have done really well in the late 80s when teams like Rockers, Hart Foundation, & Demolition were around.
– When asked about “The Band Being Back Together” when he reunited with Murodch, he acknowledges that it was weird how they were split in the first place, but he was very happy that they put him and Trevor back together. He puts over Arn Anderson as the strongest supporter of the team and they ended up spending a lot of time with him picking his brain to learn as much as they could from him because, “that’s who we wanted to be”.
– He teamed with Mark Jindrak, and he says that he had a great time teaming with him. He says that he’s working in Mexico right now and his talent is really blossoming over there. Teaming with him didn’t really work initially because they were thrown together and made face, but he says once they turned them heel, they were able to click better. He feels that there were no major plans for them though and they got split up not long after Wrestlemania XX.
– Cade loves tag team wrestling and says there aren’t a lot of real tag teams anymore. He says one of the big problems is that not many young guys are willing to do it anymore because you can’t be the top star in the company as a tag team. He puts over The Major Brothers, Curt Hawkins & Zach Ryder, as a team that started & trained as a team and was determined to make it as a team. But, Cade does not think it is fair that Vince McMahon or the WWE writers get the blame for the state of tag wrestling today.
– They had him as Garrison Cade originally because Lance Storm was on the roster at the time. He didn’t really like the name and mentions that Chris Jericho actually referenced the South Park character Mr. Garrison to him. When Cade was returning from the knee injury, he approached Vince McMahon and aired his dislike of the Garrison name. Vince seemed surprised to hear that Cade didn’t like it but agreed to allow him become Lance Cade. Cade feels that being Lance Cade allowed him to feel more himself instead of Garrison Cade where he never felt comfortable.
– Cade feels that most guys aren’t willing to do that with Vince because they are afraid of him. However, veterans like Shawn & Austin told him that eventually you have to speak up for yourself and get past the “I’m just glad to be here” stage. He feels he and Murdoch did a lot of that with Vince.
– He talks about his past experience, he says that he was a product of the WWE Developmental system, but he spent alot of time with great veterans like Regal, Michaels, Tracy Smothers, Jerry Lawler, Bobby Eaton, & Harley Race. He learned from them, and said it was some of the best experience he could have ever had. He says that a lot of young guys go straight to FCW and that is their only experience which limits them. Cade often wonders what would have happened if he hadn’t gone through the WWE system at a young age & opted to travel the World more and gain more experience. He once again mentions Richie Steamboat saying that he isn’t rushing to the top despite the fact that he could probably get by on his name.
– With all of the new opportunities coming his way, he says that he has plenty of chances to learn new things and says that “the day you stop learning new things from this business is the day you gotta leave it” If he ever goes back to the WWE, he feels that he would be a better wrestler.
– When asked about TNA, Cade says that “they are one storyline or one superstar away from being neck & neck with Vince” and he says that he keeps up with TNA, ROH, and various other promotions. He says there are great talents over there and he’d love to work there if given the chance.
– We bring up his pinfall victory over Shawn Michaels, he says it was great to do it, but it was just great to get to work with Shawn as many times as he did as they had many great matches. When he was trained by Shawn Michaels, he says that Shawn was very hands on in his training and did very well, especially with his class. He said alot of the other guys in there wree Shawn Michaels marks that were in awe of him, but Lance said that Shawn noticed that him and a few others were more determined to learn as much as possible from Shawn.
– This leads to a discussion about Shawn’s TWA promotion which featured alot of young talent and mixed in with some ECW talents like Sandman & Justin Credible. He said it was also great because at the time, they were on Saturday nights against Smackdown & WCW Worldwide, and TWA got higher ratings than Worldwide. We mention how great it was to have so many options back then, and Lance agrees saying that it is just more fun to have various options to choose from.
– Cade is not surprised at all that Jeff Hardy is the WWE Champion now and says that he is one of the best in there today. He also puts over the series of matches that he & Murdoch had with The Hardy Boyz. He said that one night John Cena came up to him and told him that he just could follow those matches.
– Lance then talks about his departure from the WWE. He says that it was a long story that started with a very bad shoulder injury that he suffered in a match with Bob Holly. He feels Holly got lost in the match and instead decided to dump him over the top rope. Cade said it was a bump he had taken a billion times before but he landed the wrong way on the outside which dislocated his shoulder. He knew that there were plans to split him & Murdoch up again and a singles run was forthcoming and this time it was going to be for real. So, he declined surgery. He now regrets not having the surgery done. He was in pain, and he was prescribed for pain killers, but they weren’t working well enough to make the pain bearable. So, he took a stronger dosage which knocked him out which resulted in the incident that happened on that faithful October day.
– Lance wants it known that his prescription use was not for recreational use. He admits it was a bad decision that he made and he says that it was his fault. “I’ve learned from my mistake, and its time to move on”.
– Cade doesn’t know if the WWE harbors any ill will towards him or not. He’d like to believe they don’t but he isn’t absorbed in that now. He’s using this as a learning experience and feels there is an endless supply of opportunities on the table for him.
– He says that his drive & determination to become a better wrestler was the main reason he stayed on the roster even during times when it seemed like a lot of guys were getting cut. He says it can be very nerve racking to see the WWE get out the clippers and remove so many of the guys from the roster not knowing if you are next.
– Cade is currently working for NWA Hollywood and the company is very well done production & talent wise. He says it s a great place for guys to work, but he doesn’t see it taking TNA’s place as Number 2, a spot that Cade feels is pretty solidly set for TNA. He goes as far as to say that if TNA’s ranking moves anywhere, they’ll slip into #1 rather than fall to #3. He feels TNA is one solid storyline away from really taking off.
– When talking about his promo skills, he says that during the Jericho/Michaels feud, he got to do his first live promo, and he was told he did very well. He had wished he had gotten more time to talk during that feud, even though he knows that he was the third wheel. He recalls him & Murdoch going to the writers and saying that them getting time to speak would mean more than their ring work if given the chance. “Ok, Cowboy Lance Cade… So what?”, says Lance. He feels promo time would’ve given him the chance to define the character better.
– Cade was disappointed that a feud with Murdoch wasn’t made a larger part of the show. He says that alot of the guys backstage were excited about the feud as they had the reputation of beating up their opponents so this time they’d beat the heck out of one another, but, for some reason, it wasn’t treated as a priority to make the feud work. Cade references other tag teams splitting like The Rockers, and feels it could have been a major angle that can make big stars out of the guys involved but feels it didn’t come to pass.
– He then discusses the WWE’s movement to being more PG. Cade says that its harder to hold back when you want to say or do certain things, but he also understands that there are kids in the audience. But he also says its hard when a few years ago the WWE had used everything but the kitchen sink, but now he says the move to PG was going to seperate the Great workers from the not so great ones. He references the Edge vs. Undertaker: Hell in a Cell match as excellent without even using blood. He says its the WWE’s way of “reeducating the fans” and that Vince even held meetings about how to do it.
– As with all the guests, we ask Cade about the Chris Benoit tragedy and the way the media handled it. He says the media coverage hurt him greatly and many people were looking at him in a different way because he was involved in wrestling. He said he’d go home and look at his wife and kids and know he’d never do anything like that. But, he says the media, in one day and maybe just for one day, made the name Chris Benoit and the negatives that go along with the tragedy eclipse Hulk Hogan in notoriety. He mentions that he was also bothered by how uninformed the media coverage was citing the CNN hatchet job on the John Cena interview and how unfair that was as well as how ridiculous it was for Nancy Grace to discuss it every night for months.
To listen to this interview, visit http://www.wrestlingepicenter.com.
