During an appearance on The Cut Pro Wrestling podcast, WWE Producer Shane “Hurricane” Helms talked about wrestlers having creative freedom:
“I think it’s very important, but the flip side is that some wrestlers aren’t creative and they think they are, and therein lies your problem. You always hear this conversation about scripted promos, like there’s this, you know, really kind of like thought processes. Great. And the problem if he has it or not… everybody’s not good at doing promos. You guys have been to indie shows and you’ve seen some of these promos, Jesus Christ! That was terrible, you know? And even in WWE and a couple of live events, we will let the people down.”
“I just go into and cut a little promo and give them that free reign. And it was like, Jesus Christ! I was frightened, so not everybody’s good at it. And you got to experiment with these talents to figure out which ones are good, which ones can you give bullet points and they can go and make it their own and make it better because there are people that can do that, but not everyone can.”
“And you know, when those scripts are turned in, when those writers turn in those scripts to Vince McMahon, they can’t have these big gaps of blank pages where a promo is supposed to be. Cause Vince is going to go, ‘What is this?’ He’s going to say, whatever he wants. Vince is going to go, ‘What are you talking about? What is the promo going to be about?’ You know? So, they kind of have to script something. They’ve got to write something on the paper, and then if the talent is good enough, they can make it their own. But generally, if the talent isn’t good enough, or they’re saying something random that doesn’t have anything to do with anything, or it might get the company in trouble [then it’s scripted].”
(quotes courtesy of WrestlingInc.com)
