Here are some Highlights:

ON the AEW Appearance At Full Gear:

Well, I mean, I’ve worked with Matt Hardy, you know, we’ve known each other for a long time, so it was standard fare as far for working with him. We were just glad that we could pull this off carrying this deletion of storyline between three companies. You know, I was the producer on the first deletion that they did in TNA. And so then we got to do a little bit of the cinematic stuff and WWE as well. And then, to continue that story in AEW was something we thought would be pretty unique. So, uh, it was a lot of fun and a lot of the, a lot of the people in production on the AEW staff, I had known as well. I knew some of them, even from my WCW days. So, um, I’m one of those people I’ve kind of been around. So even though I show up, I’m not really the new kid, cause everybody kind of knows me anyway. 

On his Appearance On Talkin Shop 2:

That was those guys that, you know, they just let me do whatever I wanted, you know, they had to kind of assemblance and it was like, eh, just, just make it funny. And that’s literally what they had on the script that Shane would make it funny. And, uh, but the best part though, it was supposed to be a redemption story for Marty Jeanetty. He was finally going to throw somebody through the barbershop window and then he couldn’t last second. He couldn’t make the show, which is the most Marty thing ever. He Martyed himself. He’s so great.

The Filming Process of Talkin Shop:

I mean, Gallows got a house that’s kind of out of the way though. So it’s not like he has a lot of neighbors that are going to be bothered by this. Very similar was done at the Hardy compound, very similar process. Um, you know, like for me I just showed up and he said, okay, what do you want to do? Like, what do you want me to do? I don’t know. I know Gallows wanted the Hurricane. That was, the first talks we had. He wanted Hurricane on the show. Initially at some point I thought Eric Young was going to be doing this. So my first idea was, well, we got to get a Super Eric and the Hurricane together. That’s gotta be in case or somehow, you know what, he’s Super Eric and I’m Gregory Helms bashing on him for being a super hero. How we do business. I had a lot of ideas for Eric. Then they almost had Dr. D David Schultz to really, which would have been amazing. And when he said that, I was like, Oh bro. I said, well, you gotta let Gregory Helms do something with David,. And then he finds out I’m a reporter. And that, that would just write itself. You guys know that

I’m not sure exactly what happened. They couldn’t get David, but then it was still in their mind to have me doing the reporter type thing. And somehow that evolved into the wrestling detective. And then I got down. It was like, yeah, you can find a body. And I’m like, what? I didn’t know how insane you were going to be. You know, I did see the first one, so I should have known, but uh, you know, so basically they just said, let me come up. You know, they let me come up with all the skits, even like for the first one, you know, with the body being right underneath this and those guys never knew, like they just let me do all that kind of stuff. So it was a creative, uh, you know, collaboration. We would talk to them and like with the referee, if you remember the skit with the referee, I said, okay, well let me come from behind this tree. And then when I’m sitting there talking to the ref off camera, I legit didn’t know what he was saying. And so I said that, I said that to Rocky, I’d go, I don’t know what he was saying. And it was either Rocky or Karl, like, well, I think that’s these kids, I think that’s it that you just don’t know what he’s saying. So it was just a lot of guys that just, you know, it was a creative collaboration. That’s the best way to say it.

And when the Powers of Pain came out at the end, I was swinging, man. Uh, and cause I knew some of the names that were going to be there, but some of them one day when I was there, you know, when I was done, I left. And so I kind of forgot. And then I didn’t see any of the stuff. I guess they shot the stuff with Chavo. Well, I think that was shot out in LA or something. It was, but Chavo’s line when he had a gun and chavo was like, he’s got a gun and the referee goes, it’s a death match, he goes, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that”. Like, that killed me. It was a little bit too much man for my taste, you know? But, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s its own thing. You know, if you’re expecting a Savage and Steamboat or flavoring Steamboat, this might not necessarily be what, uh, up your wheelhouse, but, uh, It’s kind of like a scary movie or something. You know what I’m saying? Not another team movie, it’s kind of a parody type thing. And, but it’s still got, I tell them what they should do is have a really great match. Like somebody out there just having this really fantastic matching, they’re just all over it. Cause they think it’s bad. Cause they’re so used to bad wrestling on that show. That’s what they should do next. I don’t know if they’ll do it, I probably shouldn’t even have said that now they can’t do.

On Becoming an Agent and Coach:

No, because I’ve always helped people anyway. No, I’ve always helped people when, uh, you know, like even in WWE sometimes, uh, my first one there, uh, I would help agent like a dark matches. Cause some of the dark matches they didn’t, there was no like hands-on agenting back then. Like for some of the local talent stuff like that, I’d already did little things like that. And then, and whatever the year was when I was an agent at TNA, I had torn my ACL and that’s how that came about because I wasn’t physically active at the time and they needed agents and apparently my name kept coming up and um, you know, cause I was doing Omega at the time too, uh, in North Carolina and we really kind of changed the face of the indie scene in North Carolina with like, I was just want guys to watch what I do at my show.

I’m not trying to run any of these little companies out of business. I just want you to be better, you know, watch what we do, be better. Here’s how you do it. And it really improved the whole landscape of North Carolina. And there are companies that learned from it really started booming. Um, so I was, you know, I mean, and I w I’ve always kind of had a good reputation in the business, you know, I, I had my moments for sure. You know, and I caught like we all do, but overall my reputation is pretty solid. So they brought me in as an agent. And initially I said, they offered me a job the first weekend. And I said, let me see if I’m actually gonna like this first. I said, no, at first, you know, not no, but like let’s just pump the brakes.

I came back for a couple more tapings and I really enjoyed it. You know, I really enjoy it. You know, at the end it kind of fast forwarded. I got back active in the indie scene wrestling. They brought me up to the PC WWE called me, wanting me to come down to train at the PC as a coach. And I was like, okay, that, wasn’t what I wanted to do. I always wanted to be a producer, but I actually enjoyed coaching a lot more, uh, than I thought I would. Cause I haven’t when I was younger, I just didn’t have the patience to train people. You know? It just, you gotta have a lot of patience to do that. Cause the people that don’t pick it up right away, I just get frustrated with, you know, cause for me it was, it was, it wasn’t difficult for me, you know? And I think when you got that’s why Michael Jordan isn’t a good owner because basketball was so easy for him. He doesn’t understand that it’s not easy for everybody, you know? And uh, so when I was younger trying to help train and people here and there, I wasn’t good, but I got a little bit more patience in my, in my older age. And then the coaching thing led to the producer gig. I really enjoyed that and I was having a blast until the, uh, the COVID hit and we all got furloughed. Okay.

On Wrestlers Having Creative Freedom:

I mean, I think it very important, you know, but uh, the flip side is that some wrestlers aren’t creative and they think they are, and therein lies your problem. Like if you’re, it’s like a, you know, you always hear this conversation about scripted promos, like there’s this, you know, really kind of like thought processes. Great. And the promise if he has it not, everybody’s good at doing promos, you know, you guys have been to indie shows and you’ve seen some of these promos, you know, Jesus Christ. That was terrible, you know? And, uh, even in WWE and a couple of live events, we will let the people go down. I just got into and cut a little promo and give them that free reign. And it was like, Jesus Christ. I was frightened, you know, so not everybody’s good at it. And you got to experiment with these talents to figure out which ones are good, which ones can you give bullet points to and they can go and make it their own and make it better because there are people that can do that, but not everyone can. And you know, when, when those scripts are turned in, when those writers turn in those scripts to Vince McMahon, they can’t have these big blanking, these big gaps of blank pages where a promo is supposed to be. And then cause Vince is going to go with, what is this? He’s going to say, whatever he wants, Vince is going to go, what are you talking about? What is the Promo going to be about? You know? So they kind of have to script something. They’ve got to write something on the paper, you know, and then if the talent is good enough, they can make it their own. But generally if the talent isn’t good enough, or they’re saying something random that doesn’t have anything to do with anything, or it might get the company in trouble.

Cause sometimes don’t that like, especially with WWE, its  a publicly traded company, you can’t go out there and just drop a bunch of F-bombs and say, whatever you want this that, you know, you gotta be careful about that. But, um, I think the most successful talents generally are very creative and very hands-on with what they do. And the more open you get, the more creative freedom you get, you know, like any job when you start in on those lower levels, you gotta do what you say until you climb the ranks and the ladders. I mean, it’s very similar to just about every other job out there in that aspect.

Yeah. Even, even when I went back, like all the success I had before as a producer, like I would say some ideas and they would just keep questioning me and I, and I wanted to go, y’all know I’ve done this before. Right. And I never struck out even some of the dumb stuff that y’all gave me. I still hit home, runs with how about, y’all just letting me do my thing and leave me alone. But because I was still such a new producer there, you still like ended up, you know, bottom of the totem pole.

Dropping the Hurricane Gimmick and Turning Heel in 05-06:

It wasn’t hard for me, you know, because I had been a heel in the Indies and I was always, when I was a heel, I wanted to actually be a legit heel, not a tweener. You know, three count was kind of, kind of a tweener heel to a degree. Like the stuff I did on the Indes, I wanted people to hate me. I wanted them to not buy my merch out. You know, if you see a yield on people buying this much, that’s not a Heel, that’s a tweener tween. It used to be a bad thing and it really shouldn’t be anymore. It’s just, it’s just different. Um, so I knew I could do it. It wasn’t a matter of whether I could do it or not. I just had to get the company to understand what exactly it was I was doing.

That was difficult at times. But as far as my in ring and work as the Hurricane, I kind of had to wrestle it down. You know, if you watched me as Sugar Shane, um, one of the best light heavyweights in the world. When I came to WWE. I got to keep an eye mask on. I can’t wrestle. I should be ashamed anymore because the audience, they weren’t accepting it because I would try these things on live events would try to go out there and wrestle just like Sugar Shane, and they didn’t like it. They wanted the pose, They wanted the thumb. They wanted me to try and choke slam. I’m dressed like a superhero, so I needed more character and personality and not just a flip flop fly. It just, it didn’t work for that character. And the thing about the Hurricane is too, I was having so much fun doing it. Like I knew the limitations, they were never going to make the Hurricane, the world champion. They just, they weren’t, you know, um, maybe now, because of the success of the superhero movies and Hollywood, maybe it would have a better chance today, but back then, there was still  still a kind of a bigger guys business back then, too. So there’s a couple of things that were working against me. So I knew the limitations that the character, but also I was having so much fun. Whereas I saw the top guys being miserable all the time. So I’m trying to figure out, you know, I’m having fun and I’m happy. They’re miserable. So what do I do here? You know, but I felt like I had a good run and I really kind of plateaued at a point where, okay, they’re not going to need to do anything else.

After this Rosey run with the tag championships, we won those and that’s my favorite championship run. And then they took them off of us for another experiment of Cade and Murdoch, which might’ve been the least over team we ever worked up there. And it was just like really another, another gimmick like this. In this time too, you know, Flair was always kind of a mentor for me. And Flair was just like, you’re too good for this gimmick. And like, he’s saying that to me, like a couple of years before the turm, but it was something that has stuck with me because me and Flair had a pretty good run there for a little while to work the TV a couple of times, a couple of times on live events and just that stuck with me, you know, you’re too good for this gimmick.

And I’m like, man. That’s what the Gregory Helms thing was. It was just a reminder To them of what I could do. And it worked so much that after one of my matches Arn Anderson came up to him and he goes, “Kid, I forgot how good you were”. And I have a memory thing going, thank you, sorry. And then, uh, he walked away and I was like, what does that mean? Did they not realize that the Hurricane was just a character that I was wrestling like that for a reason? You know? So I think after seeing it for so long, you start to forget you do it happened to Jerry Lawler. Like I see it now more so in retrospect, I mean, Jerry was as over as over could be. And then he got so good at the comedy, which is what I did too.

I got so good at the comedy that they forgot that I could wrestle. And then when they would track comedy would other people, and it would be a dud that I met with this Hurricane is really funny. Let’s just keep putting him in these comedy situations and then not letting me be that performer. So it was, I was a victim of my own success, which is a weird thing. You comedic success. Cause not everybody can be funny.. We see it all the time. People trying to be funny and it’s just nuts. And that’s the worst. The worst thing is when you’re trying to be funny and it bombs. 

On How Promotions Handled Wrestling During The COVID Pandemic:

I mean, I’m sure they all hate it. Everybody wants audiences. They all hate it, but they’re all trying different things and you know, you can talk all day long, whether they should have shut down or not, you know, they didn’t so no point in even talking about that, but there they have tried different things to try and to their best I think all companies  have been trying their best  Impact still doesn’t have any people in the audience, which is which sucks because they’re putting out such a good show right now. And like always they’re having a hard time getting the noise out about the show just because of its impact. But they’re putting out a really good show right now. But I think, you know, different companies based on the amount of money they got behind them, I try and do best, you know? 

On Seeing Himself in Video Games and Action Figures:

I mean, that was really cool with the first video game. It was actuallyone of the WCW ones that sucked, Backstage Assault!!! It was a terrible game, but Three Count was in that somehow. Uh, so that was the first one. That was pretty cool. And then, you know, when I got into WWE and the merch, the merch started doing really well with the Hurricane. So, uh, when the video games came and everything, that was, that was pretty awesome. I know at one time when my Jakks figure came out as the Hurricane, uh, somebody from Jakks called me and he was their best selling action figure of all the time. Cause they kind of crossed over with superheroes as well. Like the kids that didn’t even know wrestling would see the superhero guy and buy it. So that’s cool. Yeah. So I mean, but I think a Cena ended up beating it a couple of years later, but which is totally cool with the fact that I was even in that conversation for me was awesome.

When I went back to WWE had just started me back as a producer, I wasn’t even still an employee. I never really even got to employee status there. So, uh, but I’m doing the producing thing. They got me going out to San Diego comic con and uh, cause I’m a producer 24 seven segment with R-Truth. And then I ended up being in the segment as hurricane, he told me to take the outfit and I was like, okay, but on the, on a plane flight there, I know we flew through Phoenix and then Phoenix to San Diego. When I’m on the plane about to take off, I’m getting all these tweets about the Mattel booth at the San Diego comic con has put up images of the Hurricane action figure. I didn’t even know they were doing it. And so, and I like fans are so good about making things, images, you know, Photoshop and all of that.

I didn’t know if it was legit. So now this whole ride and it wasn’t a long ride, but it was like an hour and a half. I’m like, man, did they make an Action Figure up for me? Why would they tell me? You know? And so I get to San Diego and I find out it’s legit. And we, we got to go to the con to kinda, uh, check out the scene, where are we going to fill them at? And I go to the booth and was like, Oh, you should have told us you were coming. And I’m like, y’all are. Tell me y’all were making one.

The Cut Pro Wrestling Podcast: Shane “Hurricane” Helms