Lance Storm bashes Indy promoter

[Guest crownofthorns13]

From Stormwrestling.com

 

July 20, 2005

 

I find myself very motivated to type a commentary today, as I’ve just had a horrible experience with an Indy Wrestling Promoter by the Name of Matt Henstock. Matt Henstock is promoting some PWU wrestling shows in Nova Scotia Canada. I know this because he contacted me to appear at these shows. We actually agreed to terms for me to fly to Halifax teach a 2 day training seminar and to do autograph signings at 3 of his shows.

 

The problem lies in the fact that the first show was last night, the second tonight (July 20th) and the third tomorrow, and I am still in Calgary…Alberta, Canada. Ah you see the problem. After agreeing to do these appearances I was constantly waiting for my travel information, as Matt Henstock (I use Matt Henstock’s full name through out to make sure everyone remember Matt Henstock’s name so they can run in the opposite direction the next time they hear it or have the occasion to do business for or with Mr. Matt Henstock) was suppose to book both my airfare and hotel accommodations.

 

When the shows were about 10 days out and I had not yet received my flight information I started doubting Matt Henstock’s intentions to bring me in. Booking a ticket that late was going to start getting real expensive. I sent an email stating my concerns and told Matt Henstock that if I did not receive a ticket by last Wednesday (the 13th) I would assume he was not planning on honouring his commitment and I would make as public as I could the fact that I would not be at his shows, so fans would not be taken in by bate and switch promoting.

 

I received an apologetic reply from Matt Henstock, stating that he had a major backer pull out and he was going to have to cancel the shows, and would regrettably not be able to bring me in. At this point (July 14th) I posted news on my site that I had been cancelled and would not be appearing in Nova Scotia at the PWU events.

 

I have in the last two days received numerous emails from fans (thank you guys) explaining to me what is really going on in Nova Scotia. I was/am still being advertised for the up coming events, which oddly enough WERE NOT cancelled. This morning I was informed by someone who went to the show last night and bought VIP tickets to take part in a Meet and Greet type autograph signing with me, and was told that not only was nothing said in advance that I would not be coming, once at the show all blame was put on me for not showing up.

 

So let me start by clearing something up right now, Mr. Matt Henstock is a complete and utter liar, whom has both lied to me and to any fans who are going to see a show in hopes of meeting me. He is a con man who does not deserve your business. He contacted me to do his shows and we agreed to terms for my appearance, he then lied to me about his shows being cancelled, and is in turn lying to you in claiming that I am still coming. It is dishonest promoters like Matt Henstock, who kill the Indy wrestling scene, by ripping of fans and destroying their faith in the Indy market. In my opinion Matt Henstock is the lowest level of life in the wrestling business as he is destroying it from with in.

 

Anyone who got ripped off by Matt Henstock in hopes of having the chance to meet me, please accept my apologies, and I hope you understand this was completely out of my control. I would love to return to the Maritimes at some point as the fans there have always been huge supporters of mine. I don’t know when I will have the time again with Storm Wrestling AcademyTM kicking off in September, but if there is an honest promoter out that way, I would be happy to try to work out something, and I’d be willing to offer one hell of a deal, if they can furnish me with Matt Henstock’s home address so I can address this situation with him face to face.

 

If anyone out there wishes to express their displeasure with Matt Henstock and his dishonest business practices, please feel free to drop him an email at [email protected] and let him know that you don’t care for lying promoters and you hope his day in this business are numbered, as we would all be much better off without him. To help bring about this end, I would advice workers and fans alike to avoid having anything to do with Matt Henstock. If people stop working for him and attending his show, he will be out of business and he can sit at home and lie to himself and leave the rest of us honest people alone.

 

Again my apologise to any fans who got shafted by the Lying Matt Henstock, I was really looking forward to coming east and see all of you as well.

 

Lance Storm

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Lance is cool. I think he should fly out there and show up anyway tomorrow, but just wait outside the place and tell everybody that Matt Henstock is a douchebag.

[iliketurtles 0]

That exact wording too.

[The Metal Maniac 0]

I *know* Matt Henstock.

 

Not personally or anything; friend of a friend.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Kick his ass and then say you're doing it for a man from Calgary...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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...Alberta, CANADA.

[Guest thetrendsetter]

that's not half of the story. I'm a worker from the maritimes. I'll post the real story at some point this weekend (I have a booking tonight and tomomrrow) But I will let you know what happened. Even if I told you half of what happened, you'll think i'm full of shit, but the boys in the maritimes won the shitstorm sweepstakes this week.

 

Let's just say that I watched first hand as Matt Henstock had the fear of god put into him. BUt more on that this weekend.

[Guest thetrendsetter]

Guys,

 

Here is the story written by the girlfriend of one of the boys. I'll still be posting things from my point of view in the coming days. Let's just say that this has been an abortion of epic proportions.

 

I am Tony Armstrong, a local worker from the area. , more information about the boys can be found on newscott.com or obsessedwithwrestling.com

 

There is the jist of the actual story: This is gonna be long I warn you, I'm gonna try to keep it as short as possible.

 

Ok first off, the whole Mike Hughes/Matt thing was a work. It ended up going in a total different direction than it was supposed to at the start, and I'll clear that up as we go along. The thought behind it was just to have Mike there as a surprise. With the stacked roster that Matt was advertising they figured it's not like they needed Mike's name on top of that to draw more people. The whole "Mike canceling the shows" bit comes in later.

 

I can pinpoint where everything went wrong to a little over a week before the shows were going to start. Matt Henstock was supposed to have Bobby Roode's ticket for him by July 8th, not only did he not have his ticket. Bobby could not get a hold of him. Bobby had told TNA that Matt was covering his ticket from Orlando to Halifax and then Halifax back to Ontario, so not to worry about booking his return flight. It also turned out that Matt still owed Mike Hughes I think $150 from his part of the ring rental from the June Trenton show which Mike had still not received. Matt was giving the run around to everyone about it, coming up with excuses about a "family friend" travel agent that was supposed to be booking Bobby's ticket (we were told the ticket was actually BOOKED yet this TRAVEL AGENT did not have a flight number or any information to give Matt), and he was trying to send Mike money through some online debit thing and it was fucking up, it wasn't his fault blah blah blah.

 

He wound up going missing for most of that following weekend which put everyone in a panic. No one knew what the fuck was going on because no one could get a hold of him all of a sudden. We all knew something was up. Let me tell you first off that the only reason everyone was so willing to put their faith in Matt Henstock the way they did is because he talked a real good talk about having a lot of money. He claimed to have won $50,000 at the Halifax Casino and ALSO claimed to have been given a young entrepreneur grant from the gov't in the amount of $22,000. Now if he had $72,000 why could he not book a plane ticket or give Mike Hughes the $150 he owed him?

 

At this point I left a message with Henstock, as I know numerous other people did. A few weeks earlier Gary had gotten a call from Emile Dupre informing Gary that if he worked Matt's 7 shows then he was not going to be welcome back on a GPW tour if it happens in August. That went for everyone that worked for Emile (Duke, Scott, Marko, etc). Gary was really conflicted because it was Emile that had given him his break in wrestling. But Emile had promised a summer of full time work which ended early, and Gary could not afford to just sit around and take all of July off. Counting in the fact that Matt was going to be paying me to work the merch table at all his shows on top of what Matt offered Gary for the week, Gary was making almost 3 times as much with Matt as he was with Emile. Matt was promising another 2 weeks in August if he so much as broke even in July. So Gary called Emile and told him he was working for Matt. Cue burned bridge. We were all trying to get a hold of Matt telling him we'd help however we could if something went wrong (Gary even had 2 Halifax sponsors that he knew he could get if Matt would just call him back). So I pleaded with Matt, and you know what I'll go find exactly what I said to him:

 

Matt buddy, you're worrying me. Please msg me when you get this. We need to know what's going on. If something is going wrong on your end just let us know, if we can help get it solved we will. Gary and I are literally FUCKED for money if your shows don't come through so if there's something going on please let us know because we're going to have to figure out something to do to get some cash.

 

So finally on Monday Matt resurfaces, swearing up and down all shows are still on. He claims he lost a pretty big sponsor on the previous Friday and had spent the whole weekend working on getting it fixed up. Put everyone at ease claiming that he had gotten past worse roadblocks then this one, yadda yadda yadda.

 

The next couple of days (week really) was just a fuckin rollercoaster ride. Literally every day we'd wake up to phone calls and messages about "I can't get a hold of Matt, I caught Matt in this lie, I caught Matt in that lie, this town doesn't have posters yet and the shows are less than a week away, etc etc." We'd panic, we'd get a hold of Matt, Matt would spout MORE bullshit covering his tracks and convince us that it was going to be ok. On Wednesday Mike Hughes called us and told us that ALL shows were cancelled, but they were trying to salvage something out of it. Even if Matt hopped a bus to Mexico (which for a while we thought he might have) Trenton had to happen somehow. Vinny had promoted the Trenton show and would face losing his job if the show did not go on, because the station had given him thousands of dollars worth of free advertising. Mike talked to Matt and Matt decided to go on with Trenton, as well as Halifax and Berwick, but cancel everything else. Now even after this was decided he was talking to Shawn Morgan in Ontario still telling him that all 7 shows were a go, Shawn (who lost his job in Ontario over coming here for this tour) had to hear from me that there would only be 3 shows.

 

So now we're at Thursday. Matt had called up Rick Doyle (Trash Canyon) the night before pretty much crying from what I've heard, and Rick (despite not liking Henstock at all) told him to meet him at his house Thursday morning and Rick (who has an excellent business mind) would try to help him figure out the best way to pull this all off. Matt never showed up. He left a message at my place at 9:00 saying he was leaving Kentville to come to Halifax and put up posters and would call us as soon as he got into the city (we were offering to help him to get the posters up). The day goes by and no calls from Henstock. We're calling his cell phone and there's no answer. We're calling his house and his mom is saying he left in the morning to go to Ricks and then to Halifax. We're convinced he's left the country. So Mike calls Matt's mom and tells him everything Matt has been telling us. She informs him that he did not win any money at the casino, but she believes that he did get the gov't grant money. She tells him that there is no family friend travel agent. Mike's informs her that she raised a miserable bastard of a child and that not only is Mike going to call the cops on him for stealing his ring (Matt had possession of it in Kentville at the time), but that TNA and Panda Energy, a million dollar company were completely prepared to sue her son on behalf of Bobby Roode for not meeting the deal he was promised. Matt's mom was LIVID at him for fucking off and dumping this all in her lap.

 

So by suppertime everyone had given up on Matt. We were in a scramble to get the Trenton show on to save Vinny's ass. Then Matt resurfaces. He called me and Gary at our place from the bus on his way back to Kentville. He claimed had been in Halifax all day postering, and that he "forgot everyone's phone numbers back at his place" and that'd why he hadn't called until then. Of course we were all thinking "bullshit". I took the phone from Gary because Gary was just too mad to even hear his voice at that time. I told Matt that he better be telling the truth because we had sent out New Scott and Cinder to check Halifax for posters. Matt said that was fine, they were there. And then without anyone saying anything to him about money, he told me, "Tell Gary that I'm still giving him what was promised to him for the full week of work. You guys have helped me out a lot and I'll stick to my word."

 

So everyone was pissed off, no one trusted him at all, but he was promising most people their full weeks pay for 3 shows. Everyone informed him they wanted their money up front before the shows started, so where could things go wrong right? Well compared with what followed, everything before this point was right let me tell you.

 

So now we're left with the task of, "Shows are cancelled, he can no longer afford to bring in Lance Storm, or Bobby Roode what are we going to do with this mess?" How are we going to explain this to the fans that were given all these promises? Mike's wheels got turning and he offered to take the heat for it all. We had been told that plans are in motion for Real Action Wrestling to return with some shows in the upcoming months. So Mike says, "You know what, we have to give the fans a show." He knew they were going to be pissed about Lance so they decided to work the angle for the show that Mike was working for Real Action Wrestling (as were all the PWU guys that used to work for RAW) and Mike was calling venues getting shows cancelled, Mike pretended to be Matt and called Lance Storm to tell him the shows were cancelled, and poor Matt Henstock is the innocent victim. Looking back it pisses me off that anyone even tried to lift some of the burden off of Matt even momentarily for the whole thing, but we were trying our best to salvage something out of the whole mess. I know a lot of people were confused and pissed off about it being turned into an angle, but like I said, they were trying to salvage something.

 

So the days leading up to the Trenton show were a little easier but not without problems. The Ontario guys had to leave on Saturday morning still as originally planned because they had a show in Montreal on their way to the Maritimes. Matt gave them the run around about the rental car he was supposed to be paying for (he's too young to put one in his name) so Sinn being the nice guy he is, agreed to at the last minute put the car in his name. And the only car they could get on such short notice was a little Cavalier that they could barely move in. Now Halifax posters, while New Scott did find all of about 5 posters up in Halifax for the show, the city removes all posters on the 1st and 15th of every month, so the posters were gone, and no matter how much we drove Matt crazy to call the Halifax Forum, the show was STILL not listed on the sign in front of the Forum. So no one was going to show up in Halifax, but we're all getting paid up front so it's only Matt that loses out right?" Wrong.

 

On Monday Matt starts calling everyone. He tells us the gov't grant he was supposed to be getting fell through. He comes up with some bullshit story about how he applied for a regular loan though which he was given, but the money would be frozen in his bank account until Thursday so he wouldn't be able to pay everyone in full until then. You can imagine how well that went over. Gary was disgusted, but he told Matt to get him his trans money to Trenton and he'd be there. Matt had to drive the ring through to Trenton Monday evening, so he said he would drop off the money to us on his way through. Matt says he'll be in Halifax by suppertime. 6:00 comes, no call from Matt but he leaves me an msn message saying that he's running late because whoever was supposed to be helping him load the ring bailed on him, but he'd be in Halifax by 8:00. Now Gary has been putting off going to the gym all day because he's been waiting for Matt to show up. Finally at 8:30 when he still hasn't heard from Matt, him and Duke go to the gym. At 9:00 Matt called Gary's cell phone and told him he was in Lower Sackville and they made arrangements for Matt to come in and drop the money off at the gym. Now to get from Sackville to the gym should have only taken 30mins tops. 10:00 rolls around, the gym is closed, and Gary and Duke are standing outside waiting for Henstock. Henstock is not answering his cell phone. Gary snaps and gets in his car to leave. On his way home Matt finally calls him and arranges to meet him back by the gym. Gary has been very cool, calm, and collected up to this point. He is probably one of the only people who DIDN'T lose it once on Matt up to this point, but when he saw Matt there he lost it on him. Apparently he cut quite the promo on Matt about how he wasn't going to be made a fool of by a lazy little punk like Matt. He listed off every promotion that has fucked him over for money in his 8 years in the business and informed Matt that he would not be next person to do fuck him over for money. He told Matt that he didn't care how he got it, that when he got to the Trenton arena his full pay better be there waiting for him. Gary later told me that he had never snapped at someone like he had Henstock there in his whole life.

 

So now we're on to Tuesday, day of the Trenton show. We get word that after Matt left Halifax the ring truck broke down by the Halifax airport and they didn't get it in to Trenton until 3am. Good, looks good on him.

 

Everyone arrives at the arena. Matt ends up paying almost everyone for their night's work in Trenton, with the promise that he's sending money from his credit card to himself via Western Union first thing in the morning, and that the boys will have the rest of their pay before the Halifax show. Not much anyone could do then but trust his word, he wouldn't be stupid enough to piss off 15 wrestlers who know where he lives right? Ha. The Trenton show went off amazingly thanks to Vinny Glyde. The crowd WAS told before the show started that Lance Storm would not be there. Matt himself made the announcement so that anyone who wanted their money back would know who to talk to about it. After the show everything still seems ok. Matt seems happy go lucky, he's giving all the boys some beer, tempers are calm, all seems well. Everyone heads back to their hotel or to Halifax depending on where they were staying.

 

Now Wednesday comes. We first got a call I think around 2:00 from Vinny. Matt was supposed to be meeting Vinny at the radio station at 12:30 to give him the $700 he owed the station. Matt checked out of his hotel at 12:00 but has not shown up yet. Everyone gets worried but were still hoping it's just a case of Henstock being late as always. Vinny stays at the station and waits. Our only case of good luck/karma during this whole fiasco then takes place. One of the guys that works at the station comes in and is talking to Vinny and tells him that he saw Henstock while he was out getting a coffee or something, and that Henstock was getting on a bus. Vinny leaves the station. He finds the ring truck and ring, abandoned with the keys in it and the back open abandoned on the side of the road a few minutes from the arena. He goes to the bus station and finds out that Henstock is heading back to Kentville. The nice lady at the bus station helps him out by letting him know that Matt has to change buses in Halifax at 6:00. Vinny also has copies of some receipts (I can't remember now if they were for the bus or for the U-haul rental but I think it was for the bus), that were forged with Henstock's mom's signature. Matt stole her credit card and had his friend Heather pretend to be her.

 

So we gather up as much of the crew as possible and go down to the bus station in Halifax to wait for Henstock to arrive. He's lucky that we had to wait almost an hour because if he had have arrived right after we got all of this news I'm quite certain that he would have been hurt. Luckily with some time to think things over the guys realized that they if they hit Henstock once, off he would go to the police station and charge them with assault. No one was willing to give him that. While we were there we found out that he was trying to throw us off by leaving msgs with a couple of people saying that he was going to New Brunswick to stay with family. We knew different because Vinny found out exactly where he was going from the bus depot. Pretty much everyone on the roster was there when the bus showed up except for the Ontario boys and Trash. We all stood outside the bus and Matt came off of it by his own free will. Gary put his hand on Matt's arm and told Matt to come with us, Matt responded with, "DON'T FUCKIN TOUCH ME" and then tried to run. Mike grabbed his shirt collar and lead him up against his van and away from the bus. It should be pointed out that on the trip over to Mike's van Matt's pants wound up falling down past his bare ass. Enjoy that visual everyone because trust me we did. Mike tells him that he owes us money and he's going to give it to us. He starts spouting off bullshit about what was he supposed to do, blah blah blah. Gary informed him he was supposed to act like a fuckin man and be honest with us. They escort him into the Westin hotel to an ATM, but sure enough Matt has no money. They keep him there and Mike calls his Mom to tell her what's going on. After a lot of talking her and Mike worked out a deal that if he would let Matt get back on the bus and go home to her, that she wound pay off all the boys. She was going to send $400 right away via western union. So Mike tells Matt to get on the bus, and we leave the bus station. We go straight to the Sobeys around the corner with a western union to get the money from Matt's mom.

 

Now while Mike is in there filling out some papers, I get a call from Sinn. The Ontario boys have arrived at the bus station just after we left and pulled Henstock BACK off the bus. After they did that, Matt's mom called the bus station to make sure that Mike kept his word and let Matt on the bus, the station tells her, "No he's not on the bus, some guy with a ponytail just pulled him off of it again". She calls Mike's cell phone livid, "You gave me your word, you're kidnapping my son, you're beating him up right now I can hear him in the background!" Mike is baffled, all he can say is, "I'm in a fuckin SOBEYS, I'm not kidnapping anyone!" So the Ontario boys wind up letting Matt back on the bus, but they follow it in their car to Kentville to get their money, and Matt's mom hangs up on Mike telling him she's going to the police station to charge him with kidnapping.

 

Mike decides to do the smart thing and go down to the police station himself instead of having them come look for him. He takes a couple of people that witnessed everything down with him. He walked in the police station with his hands in the air, "Here I am, I'm the kidnapper you're probably looking for!" The guy looked at him and said, "Well you're the first kidnapper to come in here that way let me tell you". After the police got over their shock that Mike didn't have any criminal record they got the full story from him. The police officers response? "And didn't you kill the guy?" The police officer told him that she hadn't reported anything yet, but if she did they would be notified right away, and he would call Mike.

 

We all gathered back at our place after that, and the "what's next" question came up. After a lot of talking it was decided to try to get the Berwick show on. We were up all night figuring out how to pull it off. The most sleep any of us got was 2 hours. So first thing in the morning yesterday, Duke, Lincoln Steen, and Zero left to drive to Trenton in Steen's car to pick up the ring and bring it to Kentville. We left Halifax at about noon to drive to Berwick ourselves. The Ontario guys had spent the night in Berwick and took Henstock to the arena themselves to get the booking taken out of his name so he couldn't try to cancel the show on us. They also had a written agreement drawn up and signed by Henstock and his mother where Henstock has to make monthly payments to pay back the money he owes, and they got him on video tape reading the statement, showing the paper he signed, and confirming that he agreed to it.

 

So we get to the Berwick arena and got in touch with the boys with the ring to see how they were making out. Tony Armstrong made the call and an all too familiar tone of voice came from him with him saying, "Fuck off....you're fuckin kidding me". He gets off the phone to give us the news of what he's just been told. Not only did Lincoln Steen's engine blow in his car on the way to get the ring, but once they got the ring truck and filled it up with $100 worth of gas the fuckin ring truck broke down. HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN??? I still haven't managed to completely comprehend it. TWO cars break down. (For more on their story go to Steen's journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lincolnsteen/). They can't get the ring or themselves to Berwick. They tried to see if they could get it towed to Berwick by the company, it was going to take 2 hours before a tow truck to there, and they'd still have to drive the almost 3 hours to Berwick. They tried to get the company to give them a working truck, they couldn't do it because the abandoned u-haul was in Henstock's name, not theirs. We tried getting a hold of people in Halifax who had rings to see if we could use theirs, we couldn't get a hold of them. Even if we had by the time we arranged for a ring truck to be rented in Halifax, got the ring in it, and got it to Berwick, it would have been too late. We all stood in the Berwick arena like fuckin zombies. Defeated and in disbelief. We wanted more than anything to make the show go on and to end the whole mess on a high note. But we couldn't. Believe me when I say we did everything we possibly could to make it happen. We left Henstock's contact information for refunds on the door, and met up with the Ontario boys at a restaurant in Kentville. Nick gave us a hilarious re-inaction of Henstock reading the agreement to the camera (we're hoping to get it online for everyone to see). After we ate we said our goodbye's. We went back to Halifax, they headed back to Ontario. Eventually Vinny ended up driving the guys that were stuck in Trenton back to Halifax.

 

So there you have it, the truth of the biggest wrestling tour disaster to ever hit the Maritimes. Even though I lived it I can still barely believe it actually happened.

 

If anyone has any questions on anything I didn't cover please feel free to ask and I'll be glad to clear it up.

[The Kid 0]

Thanks for the story, it was an interesting read. But, as an indy worker myself you may want to be careful about posting these types of things on the internet, a lot of times things like these should stay backstage.

[JHawk 0]

Thanks for the story, it was an interesting read. But, as an indy worker myself you may want to be careful about posting these types of things on the internet, a lot of times things like these should stay backstage.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I disagree. I referee for some indies. If I were told I'd be working so many shows and getting so much for them, got dicked around like that, and people knew I'd get dicked around and didn't tell me, I'd be furious. That's something you absolutely have to tell your fellow workers.

 

OK, sometimes things happen, but this seems way too extreme for it to be a case of things unforseen happening.

[The Kid 0]

The promoter was way out of line, I'll say that. He's worse than ours...and thats saying something heh heh. You know how shitty politics are though, if that stuff had happened to me I probably would have posted it somewhere too. More power to them I guess, I just hope it doesn't come back to bite him on the ass. I've seen too many people get in shit from more than just one promoter for posting things on the net.