Shane Helms Confirms His WWE Status, Talks Vince McMahon’s Current Creative Influence

Wrestling Inc. – Shane Helms Interview

Conducted by Wrestling Inc. Managing Editor Nick Hausman

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zRIzbwySIc&t=3s&ab_channel=WrestlingINC

Audio Link: https://audioboom.com/posts/7706553-brock-lesnar-wwe-update-spin-the-wheel-make-the-deal-returns-feat-shane-helms

Post Link: https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2020/10/shane-helms-confirms-his-wwe-status-675927/

On his current WWE status:

Yeah, I guess it’s a furloughing, until I go back. To me, it’s the same thing as being released if I go back or whatever. April 15, Tax Day, of course, always sucks but it wasn’t anything that was unexpected for me anyway. Kind of made sense since I was sitting at home doing nothing, but I’ve been podcasting for a long time myself dating all the way back to 2010. I was just having this discussion with a friend of mine. I was live streaming back in 2010.

On how his relationship with Vince McMahon has evolved over his nearly twenty year history with WWE:

My interactions are very similar but just what he expects from a producer is different from talent. That was a different, unique challenge for me because as a talent, he wants you to go in there, be bold [and] tell him, ‘hey, this sucks and all of that.’ As a producer, not so much. As a producer, he wants the ‘OK, yes sir! I’ll go try and make this s–t happen.’ I’m still that guy that goes, ‘this sucks.’ That might be why my ass is still furloughed too.

Just throwing that out of there, being honest about everything, but for him, he still is all about the business. He’s still all about going forward, building the brand. During this whole COVID era, he wasn’t going to sit back and just let things happen, look into the future. He’s just a visionary guy. The hardest-working human beings, at least one of the hardest-working. I don’t know how he doesn’t sleep. It’s just amazing.

All of those stories are absolutely true, and there were several times back when I had a suggestion and he tweaked it. And I was like, ‘OK, I want to see how that goes,’ and then he would be absolutely correct. It’s real easy, because he is the main guy, to lump all that negativity toward him and not all of his ideas have been good. Nobody has, but still, to this day, there’s still a lot of knowledge there.

On an example of Vince McMahon taking one of his creative ideas and making it better:

It was on the rise of Kofi. It might have been Elimination Chamber, and it was going to come down to Daniel and Kofi. And I know I had an idea and so did Daniel about involving Rowan [and] New Day to bring up all of these extra added elements to the Elimination Chamber. And Vince was like, ‘no, it needs to come down to them.

Just them and we were all like – because we had all these other ideas for spots, spots, spots with this guy and that guy and that guy, but then at the end of the night, as it built, what the audience wanted to see was just Kofi and Daniel. And when we came through the back, we were like, ‘he’s absolutely, 100% correct. It was him.’ There’s still a lot of the basics that he grasps. He’s still a big picture guy, and when a lot of us and when I do a progress report, we dissect it show by show by show.

On Vince McMahon as a big picture thinking:

As probably what you guys do on Wrestling Inc. with a show, you’re going to look at RAW. You’re going to look at that episode of RAW, and that’s it, but there’s a much bigger picture. It’s just like a book. If you dissect every single chapter of a book, there’s going to be some chapters that just aren’t that good. They’re set-up chapters to set up something down the road, but Vince is always a bigger picture guy and sometimes, things that are going to happen on this episode, and he’s like, ‘we’ll fix it later,’ and he’s just that bigger picture guy.

When you’re focused on that segment and as a producer, whether I have one or two segments on that night, sometimes I would lose focus of what was happening on the other show, but you gotta be careful about that because I want this segment to be the best because that’s my segment. When you’re the guy on the top of the mountain and has to look at everything, you’re just going to have a different perspective.