For the majority of Shane Helms’ run in WWE, he portrayed The Hurricane character, but later turned heel and went with a new character, Gregory Helms.
This was something that the former WWE Cruiserweight Champion talked about while speaking to Back Sports Page
It wasn’t hard for me 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. Three Count was kind of a tweener heel to a degree. Like the stuff I did on the indies, I wanted people to hate me. I wanted them to not buy my merch out. 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 different, 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 work as the Hurricane, I kind of had to wrestle it down. You know, if you watched me as Sugar Shane – 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 shouldn’t be ashamed anymore because the audience, they weren’t accepting it because I would try these things on live events and 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 a choke slam. I’m dressed like a superhero, so I needed more character and personality, and not just a flip flop fly. It just didn’t work for that character.
Helms also talked about the limitations of doing The Hurricane gimmick.
And the thing about the Hurricane is, too, I was having so much fun doing it. I knew the limitations; they were never going to make the Hurricane the world champion. 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 a kind of a bigger guys business back then, so there’s a couple of things that were working against me. So, I knew the limitations that the character had 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? 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.