Shane Helms was recently a guest on the “411 Wrestling Interviews Podcast”. During the appearance, he was asked about Jon Moxley’s frustrations with WWE creative and the overarching feeling amongst talents that scripting promos is a bad idea. Here are the highlights:
On If He Felt His Promos Were Ever Over-Scripted:
I personally never did, but keep in mind I came up in a different era. There was a lot more of, ‘Let’s see what the guy can do before we script his promos.’ But trust me, recently on a couple live events, I’ve seen talents go out there, we go ‘Okay, go cut a promo,’ it’s not scripted and it turns out not being good. This whole unscripted promo [thing], it’s only good if the talent can actually do it. Not everybody can, and there are talents there that prefer the scripted promos. They prefer it. So it’s just, it varies on the person. I never needed a scripted promo. You can give me bullet points and I’ll get there, and Creative figured that out early on. Especially with my Hurricane character because I’m always talking about some crazy comic book scenario anyway, they were like, yeah they were literally just telling me to ‘Hurricane it up.’ And so I would. But not everybody can do that. Some people can’t, you know. And I think it just varies on the talent. If you can go out there and you can cut a quick promo without no help, as long as you hit those bullet points, awesome. But I’ve seen a bunch of guys that can’t do that as well.
On What Type Of Guidelines He’d Have Relating To His Promos:
I would get like, bullet points. And I’m sure there was times where it was scripted and I was like, ‘Oh, I can change this up and make it better,’ but it would still get over the important points that they wanted to get over. And it’s a script, you know. A lot of guys get really wrapped up into their little bubble, and you have to understand. Their world literally does revolve around this. Everybody’s does. But I never really got too wrapped up in ‘My character wouldn’t say this.’ I would just find a way for my character to say it. Because it’s your character, it’s not really you. Like I say, it’s always gonna go back to, it varies on the performer. You can give me any script, and I can make it work.
On Other Talent Struggling With Promos That Weren’t Scripted:
Yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen them go out there and go, ‘Hey, go out there and cut a promo,’ and it’d be amazing. And I’ve also seen the ‘Hey, go out there and cut a promo’ and it wasn’t. Would a script have helped? Who knows. And I’ve seen that too, in my whole career.
On Talent Having Issues With WWE Creative:
I’ve been in WCW, TNA, Ring of Honor, WWE. I’ve been in all the major companies. There’s always people complaining about creative, 100% of the time. There’s always somebody. And I mean, even when things are going great. There’s always gonna be people complaining about it. There’s gonna be some people that think it’s awesome. Generally, they think it’s awesome then things are going their way. There’s a weird pattern, you know. When things are going your way, creative is great. When things aren’t going the way you think they should, creative sucks. It’s weird how that happens.
You can listen to the full interview below:
Credit: 411Mania.
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