During a recent interview with The Mirror, Shane “Hurricane” Helms commented on his new role as a WWE agent/producer, retiring from in-ring competition and more. You can check out some highlights below:
On returning to WWE as a producer: “Being a producer is something I’ve always kinda been interested in, even back to my first run in WWE. If there was a night where I wasn’t doing something myself on TV, I would always help out other guys in different segments. I’ve always been a fan of the whole process of pro-wrestling, not just certain guys, I’ve always been a fan of the entirety of the show. I got a big opportunity in TNA to be an agent there as well and that just kinda fuelled the fire a little bit. I’d been going down to the [WWE] Performance Centre in Orlando as a guest coach and that job was just great, they also let me do some agency there. That was going to be my strength, I talked to them about what I could be best at. Could I be a trainer? Of course I could be a trainer, I could train anybody. But my strength I found was as an agent and as a producer. I guess that just somehow got in somebody’s ear and when they decided that they needed new producers, I was already going to be brought into the fold anyway. So instead of going to the Performance Centre they just brought me up to the main roster. So it was something that kinda developed on its own organically over the last six, seven, eight months or so. You work with everybody, they don’t give you certain guys or anything like that. You just work with everybody, you get certain segments of the show to work on and you just try to add your expertise and see if you can make it better. You’re kinda the middle-man between creative and the talent. I think that’s the best way to describe it.”
On what he’d like to bring to WWE as a producer that he didn’t get: “I mean, just being able to share your experiences, that’s crucial to being a teacher or being a coach or being a producer. I’ve had a really wild career. You know a lot of producers when I was coming up, they were good at what they were good at. They had their particular thing. Arn Anderson was a fantastic heel, Ricky Steamboat was a fantastic babyface and neither one of them really went to the other side. Steamboat especially was never heel, Arn dabbled in the babyface now and then, but Arn was a fantastic heel. I kinda did a little bit of everything, I was a heel, I was a babyface, I was a wrestler, I was a gimmick character. So I bring a little bit more diversity, there’s not really a situation they can give me that I haven’t been in! I think that’s what generally helped me in TNA and I think that’s what is going to help me in WWE as well.”
On retiring from in-ring work: “It’s definitely tough, you know. It’s sort of an ego thing for sure, but wrestling is all I’ve ever wanted to do since I was three-years-old. Since I started watching television, my earliest memory of television is watching professional wrestling. I had other opportunities to do other things in my life, I was in collegiate programmes when I was 11-years-old. All my teachers were trying to make me go that way and use my brain in different areas. But I just wanted to be a pro-wrestler, it’s all I wanted. The saving grace is that I’ll still be involved in the business and I’m not walking away completely. But when it finally comes to the point where I realise that I’m not going to wrestle anymore, that’s still going to be a tough pill to swallow.”
On WWE 205 Live: “Yeah, I’ve produced a couple of matches for 205 Live already. It’s just another show. It’s still under the WWE banner, it’s just something else for the Network, more content for the Network, another avenue for guys to show their skills and get seen and then go up to the quote-on-quote ‘main roster’. The Cruiserweight division, especially now is completely separate because of 205 Live. But I don’t know if a weight class really holds up anymore in pro wrestling. It’s difficult. When you’ve got guys like Rey Mysterio and Finn Balor and all these smaller guys and they’re on the main roster and doing fantastic, it’s kinda like ‘why does this other division even exist?’ You know, ‘what’s the difference?’, so it’s kinda hard to define. And anytime something’s hard to define, that’s going to be confusing to a casual viewer. So I’m not sure what the solution is. I kinda felt that at one time myself, I was the Cruiserweight Champion and I was wrestling Rey Mysterio, who was the World Heavyweight Champion. I outweighed Rey by about 40lb I believe at the time and I remember going, ‘are weight classes necessary anymore?’ I’m in the Cruiserweight division and I tower over Rey, I’m about six inches taller, like I said ‘I outweigh him by 40lb and he’s the World Heavyweight Champion, he has the big gold Ric Flair belt, I had the little Cruiserweight title, and I was like ‘this is kinda pointless at this point, you know what I mean?’”
On the benefits of WWE 205 Live: “But the positive is it’s another avenue for guys to showcase their talent and I’m all about that. Mustafa Ali is doing awesome things now, Cedric Alexander has got star power written all over him, the champion Buddy Murphy, he’s a very, very talented guy. There’s a lot of guys they just brought up like Oney Lorcan and he’s been fantastic in his first two appearances on 205 Live man, absolutely fantastic. That Herberto kid is going to be a huge star. I believe in the future. It’s like you’ve got NXT, which is definitely putting out stars of the future, and 205 Live sometimes might just be a stepping stone between NXT and the main roster. But at the same time, it’s also trying to create its own identity. So I’m looking forward to where it goes. It’s not the final product right now, I think 205 is going to continue to evolve.”
