Gregory Helms

Gregory Helms
File:Gshelms.jpg
Born	July 12, 1974 Smithfield, North Carolina
Professional wrestling career
Ring name(s)	Gregory Helms Shane Helms Hurricane Helms The Hurricane
Billed height	6 ft 0 in (183 cm)
Billed weight	191 lb (87 kg)
Trained by	Matt Hardy Jeff Hardy
Debut	1991

Gregory Shane Helms, (born July 12, 1974 in Smithfield, North Carolina), is a professional wrestler performing for World Wrestling Entertainment on the SmackDown! brand. He is the current WWE Cruiserweight Champion.

Career

World Championship Wrestling

After wrestling in many independent promotions, including the OMEGA promotion founded by Matt and Jeff Hardy, Helms and his friend Shannon Moore signed with WCW in 2000.

In WCW, Helms's first break came as a member of the heel team 3 Count with Moore and Evan Karagias. The trio was a parody of the popular boy bands of the time and their gimmick involved making music videos and performing before their matches, during which their opponents tended to attack them before the match started. Helms later split from the group, started using the name "Sugar" Shane Helms, and found success as WCW Cruiserweight Champion. He was the reigning Cruiserweight Champion immediately before WCW was bought out by the then WWF.

WWF/WWE

Helms, after a name change from Shane to his first name of Gregory due to stem confusion that WWF staff thought would be caused from having him and Shane McMahon as active members in the organization, was brought in a part of the Invasion storyline as member of the WCW/ECW Alliance. Along the way, he had another name change to Hurricane Helms, but found little success until he began using The Hurricane character.

Helms' superhero character is loosely based on The Green Lantern; he sports a tattoo of the hero's logo on his right bicep. His real-life fixation of the character was parlayed into The Hurricane gimmick, and Helms gradually evolved into a full superhero character to the point of wearing a costume to the ring. During his time in the locker room he would dress as a 1950s reporter with glasses. This as a homage to Superman.

Originally a heel, he believed himself to have superhuman powers. He would, for example, wrestle heavyweights and attempt to chokeslam them, but given his comparatively small size comically couldn't even pick the other wrestler up. Over time, his character increasingly received positive fan reaction. Helms became a face and was able to chokeslam some of his opponents, often acting surprised at his own strength. Royal Rumble 2002 was one of the Hurricane's more memorable moments of "superhuman strength", as he stormed the ring during the Royal Rumble match and attempted (and failed) to double chokeslam that year's megastars Triple H and Stone Cold Steve Austin.

During The Hurricane's stint as a heel, he stole Spike Dudley's girlfriend, Molly Holly. She later emerged as Mighty Molly, his first superhero sidekick. The duo went their separate ways at WrestleMania X8 when Molly turned on Hurricane and won the Hardcore Title from him.

The Hurricane would later be drafted to SmackDown!, winning the Cruiserweight Title from Taijri and Billy Kidman in a triple threat match. Later in 2002, he was traded to RAW and won the World Tag Team Titles with Kane. Early in 2003, Hurricane was involved in a hilarious feud with The Rock. The two would engage in awesome (and memorable) backstage segments, with The Rock referring to the The Hurricane as "The Hamburglar" (in part because his mask is similar to the Hambuglar's). This comic feud culminated in a match on RAW, in which The Rock clearly dominated. However, in a shock turn of events (and in part of Stone Cold Steve Austin's distractings of The Rock), The Hurricane emerged victorious, giving him arguably the biggest win of his career.

File:SuperHeros.jpg

The Super Heroes, Hurricane and (the S.H.I.T.) Rosey.

In 2003, Hurricane "discovered" Rosey's potential as a superhero, and christened him "Rosey, the Super Hero in Training" (or the S.H.I.T.). On the July 19, 2004 episode of RAW, Rosey appeared with a new costume, seemingly graduated to a full superhero and is tag teaming with his mentor.

On May 1, 2005, at Backlash, Hurricane and Rosey defeated La Résistance in the finals of a Tag Team Turmoil match to win the World Tag Team Championship.

Not long after winning the titles, Stacy Keibler joined Rosey and The Hurricane as their sidekick, Super Stacy, but in August 2005, Rosey and The Hurricane lost Keibler as their sidekick when she and Christy Hemme were traded to SmackDown!

On September 5, 2005 Hurricane and Rosey were defeated by Lance Cade and Trevor Murdoch, during their debut match on RAW. Though this was a non-title match, the pair earned themselves a title match at Unforgiven. During the title match, Murdoch delivered an elevated DDT on The Hurricane to the outside. The DDT caused Hurricane to suffer a "stinger" (in kayfabe) and allowed Cade & Murdoch to beat the injured Hurricane later in the match to win the World Tag Team Titles from him, and Rosey.

The loss of the titles began a sliding path that brought the team to an end, for weeks after the pair would begin a losing streak, mainly caused by Hurricane's injuries. During the October 17, 2005 episode of RAW, The Hurricane was assaulted by Kurt Angle at the request of Vince McMahon, after the beating footage was shown of Hurricane ripping off his mask and striking Rosey (who had come to the ring to his aid). The next week, The Hurricane no showed a World Tag Team Title match leaving Rosey to face the champions alone. During the match, The Hurricane (out of costume) appeared at the top of the entrance ramp; reverting back to his real name, Gregory Helms watched as Rosey was double teamed and defeated. After the match, Helms announced that he was fed up of being funny for the crowd, and that he had been carrying Rosey as a tag team partner. This started the first heel turn for Helms since his debut in the WWE with the WCW/ECW Alliance.

On the November 7 edition of RAW, Helms and Rosey finally faced off in singles action. Helms won the match after hitting the Shining Wizard. He mentioned on WWE.com's Unlimited service his frustrations with not only not being on RAW in recent weeks, but Jerry "The King" Lawler making comments about him on the last RAW of 2005 on December 26. On the first RAW of 2006 on January 2, Helms came to the ring to confront Lawler face to face about the comments, to which Lawler responded that when Helms was The Hurricane he was at least half-entertaining, but now he was just a guy that sucked. Helms responded by slapping Lawler, who responded back in kind by punching Helms and sending him out of the ring. This confrontation led to Lawler challenging Helms to a match at New Year's Revolution. Helms would go on to lose the match after a Fist Drop.

At the 2006 Royal Rumble, Helms won the WWE Cruiserweight Championship in an Open Invitational to all former Cruiserweight Champions. The participants were Helms, the reigning champion Kid Kash, Funaki, Jamie Noble, Nunzio, and Paul London. Helms won after hitting the Shining Wizard on Funaki.

He made his return to SmackDown! in February, to start a feud with Nunzio, Kid Kash and the other cruiserweights. During this time Helms defeated Nunzio in a one-on-one match and the week after he was suppose to defend against Kid Kash but Kash was away on a family emergency so Scotty 2 Hotty took his place. Helms defeated Scotty 2 Hotty and cut a promo about being better that all the cruiserweights, at this point all the cruiserweights at the show (who were in contention for the belt) invaded the ring and beat down Helms giving him all there signature moves. It was later announced by Teddy Long at No Way Out Helms would be set to face all these cruiserweights in a match for the title. At No Way Out, Helms was able to retain the championship after facing the eight other cruiserweights in a nine-way match.

In wrestling

File:Heros and stacy.jpg

Rosey and The Hurricane holding Stacy Keibler.

Nicknames

• "The Suicide Bomb"
• "The Serial Thriller"
• "The Show"
• "Kid"
• "Kid Vicious"
• "Gauge"
• "Sugar" Shane Helms
• "The Sensation of Innovation"
• "IBM — Insane Bump Machine"
• "The Nice Package"

Previous allies

• Evan Karagias
• Shannon Moore
• Lance Storm
• Rosey
• Kane

Previous managers

• Count Grog
• "Mighty" Molly
• Super Stacy

Finishing moves

• Vertebreaker (Back to back double underhook piledriver)
• Shining Wizard (Running enzuigiri to a kneeling opponent)
• Nightmare on Helms Street / Eye of the Hurricane (Spinning headlock elbow drop)
• Chokeslam
• Arm triangle choke

Signature moves

• Overcast (Flying neckbreaker)
• Hurrikick / Sugarsmack (Superkick)
• CrossFace Halo (Cross-arm sitout sleeper slam)
• X-Plex (Cross-arm German suplex)
• TopSpin Facebuster (Fireman's carry to facebreaker knee smash)
• Hammerlock Russian leg sweep
• StrangeHold Legsweep (Cross-arm Russian leg sweep)
• Inverted Side Suplex (Inverted side slam)
• The Shoulder Wrecker (Inverted front facelock to shoulderbreaker on the knee)
• Triple Facebuster (Triple sitout facebuster)
• The Calm Before The Storm / Death Wish (Reverse Double-Underhook Falling Neckbreaker)
• Back Snap (Modified Double Knee Backbreaker)
• Leg Drop

Double team moves

• Super Hero Splash / Falling Star Bomb (Elevated splash)
• Countdown (Spinning Samoan drop, neckbreaker combination)
• Sidewalk slam, Eye of the Hurricane combination

Championships and accomplishments

• World Wrestling Entertainment

• 2-Time WWE World Tag-Team Champion (with Kane, then Rosey)
• 1-Time WWE European Champion
• 2-Time WWE Cruiserweight Champion
• 1-Time WWE Hardcore Champion

• World Championship Wrestling

• 1-Time WCW Cruiserweight Champion
• 1-Time WCW Hardcore Champion (with Evan Karagias and Shannon Moore)

• Other Titles

• 2-Time CCWA Light Heavyweight Champion
• 1-Time EAW Cruiserweight Champion
• 1-Time NWA Wildside Tag-Team Champion (with Shannon Moore)
• 1-Time SEWA Light Heavyweight Champion
• 1-Time SCW Champion
• 1-Time SCW Tag-Team Champion (with Mike Maverick)
• 2-Time OPW Tag-Team Champion (with Mike Maverick)
• 1-Time SWA Light Heavyweight Champion
• 2-Time CCW Light Heavyweight Champion
• 1-Time NDW Light Heavyweight Champion
• 1-Time NAPW Light Heavyweight Champion
• 1-Time NDW Tag-Team Champion (with Mike Maverick)
• 1-Time WWO Light Heavyweight Champion
• 1-time TCW Texas Tag Team Champion (with Lenny Lane)

External links

Official Websites

• Official Website
• WWE Profile
• Gregory Helms MySpace profile

Fansites

• Behind The Mask
• Helms Realm