Shane Helms Remembers His WCW Days, Talks WWF Invasion Angle

Shane Helms was one of the few pieces brought over to WWE from WCW that ended up sticking around for years after the promotion folded. 

When speaking to the Pancakes and Powerslams podcast, Helms remembered his time in WCW, which set him up for a near decade in WWE.

“Keep in mind that I am probably a little more positive than 95% in this business. I can be annoyingly positive, but anything that was bad I didn’t focus on it as much. I had a great time there in terms of exposure to the world my time in WCW did. I just took that opportunity and ran with it, and had a great time. Any of the bad stuff that you might hear the guys talking about I just didn’t pay any attention to it. I wasn’t part of any of the corporate decision making meetings, so there wasn’t anything for me to really worry about with what was going on behind the scenes. The only thing I was able to control was what I was doing inside the ring. That was the only thing I was able to focus on.”

Helms was also asked about the ill-fated WCW Invasion storyline that met success from a box office standpoint, but wasn't as well received from a quality perspective across the board.

“It made money, it didn’t flop necessarily. Could it have done a lot better with the top stars coming in? Absolutely! We didn’t bring the varsity team. We didn’t bring the true power like the nWo right away. The first thing was Lance Storm coming in, and then Booker T coming in, and of course they were two top talents, but they weren’t the top guys in WCW at the time. It wasn’t the Goldberg, it wasn’t the Sting, and that was what you needed in terms of when we are going head to head you bring your heavy hitters. I always tell people that, just like the Super Bowl, but if your starting lineup doesn’t show up you have to bring in the second string. There were still a lot of good moments that came out of that, and it gave a lot of talents the chance to show themselves to the WWF audience, because the WWF audience doesn’t know who the [heck] ‘Sugar’ Shane was, so it gave me an opportunity and I also want to point of to, that the top WWF stars at the time; Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, Kurt Angle all these guys; WWF’s top guys had it going on, they were able to talk and work, and especially during that time they were outworking the top guys of WCW.”

You can check out the full interview at this link, and see Fightful.com's archive of Shane Helms Podcasts at this link, including his Royal Rumble and WrestleMania experiences. Our podcast with Shane talking the dying days of WCW can be seen above.