Jim Cornette recently took to an episode of his Jim Cornette Experience podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including Toni Storm’s timeless gimmick.
Cornette said, “I find Tony Storm entertaining. She’s great, and this gimmick is great, the Sunset Boulevard, ‘I’m ready for my closeup Mr. DeMille,’ the silent movie treatment, okay, all of that stuff. But here’s the problem: on a wrestling show, this video and this gimmick would stand out. But on a do-it-yourself cable access sketch comedy show like this, it’s just more silliness. It’s on the same theory that if you have 12 SF Footers, you have no Giants. Everything is fucking silly and over the top, and people are auditioning for something in a business that they’re not currently in. It blends in. I want to like Tony Storm in the ring; she’s great, and she’s performing this well. But instead of accentuating the heel being crazy or eccentric or demented or deluded or whatever, instead of accenting that or accentuating it by everybody around them still being normal, when you put people in with them that are just as fucking weird, and they’re surrounded by activity that’s just as fucking weird, it hampers that thing to get over. So, I’m struggling to like the stuff I like because it’s just endless with this program.”
Dustin Rhodes’ Goldust character:
“Remember when Golddust started, it was a revolutionary gimmick, and he became a top guy, and you understood the gimmick, it’s him and it’s Marlena, and he looks like an Oscar in the whole nine yards. But then because he kept trying to make it fresh, and he had s***stain (VInce Russo) staying there to f**8ing spur him along, it got so ridiculous at the end, wearing the ball gags and the f***ing lingerie, and he was talking about getting breast implants. That took two or three years. This has happened to Toni Storm in eight weeks. She went from ‘boy, this is really good’ to, like you said, ‘this is too far, it’s too much.’”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.