While doing an interview with Wrestling Inc, Shane Helms spoke about the influence of Vince McMahon on WWE’s creative.
Obviously, McMahon has the final say on everything that made it to air. Here is what the former WWE producer had to say:
Shane Helms on how he’s still currently on furlough from WWE: 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.”
Shane Helms on dealing with Vince McMahon as a producer compared to an in-ring talent: “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*** happen.’ I’m still that guy that goes, ‘this sucks.’ That might be why my ass is still furloughed too.”
Helms on how Vince McMahon is all about the business: “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 a change Vince McMahon made in the Kofi Kingston SmackDown gauntlet match before Elimination Chamber: “It was on the rise of Kofi. It might have been Elimination Chamber, and it was going to come down to Daniel and Kofi,” Helms recalled. “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.”
