The saying goes that Paul Heyman would rather climb a tree to lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth, and it was a lie that broke him into the business aged just 13. He phoned the headquarters of the WWE (then WWWF) and managed to convince a receptionist that Vince McMahon Senior had personally asked him to call to arrange a press pass. Even more impressively he then somehow convinced McMahon himself of the same story.
That led to several years of backstage access at Madison Square Garden where Heyman took photographs to sell to magazine including Pro Wrestling Illustrated as well as picking up payoff from McMahon himself. By the time he was 20, Heyman was an events promoter for the famed Studio 54 nightclub in Manhattan and arranged for Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes to attend a show at the venue where newcomer Bam Bam Bigelow squashed four opponents. The event earned national media attention, helping kick off Bigelow’s career in style.
A couple of years later Heyman began working as a manager on local independent shows and then had a run in Florida where he picked up the Paul E Dangerously name, taken from a spoof gangster movie. His first real breakthough came in Memphis where he managed Tommy Rich and Austin Idol, building up to a legendary steel cage hair vs hair match with Lawler against Idol. In the match’s closing moments Rich emerged from under the ring where he had hidden all night, helping Idol take the win and leaving Lawler to meet a barber while the heels fled for their lives.
Jerry Jarrett, Memphis promoter at the time, tells FSM: “Paul didn’t stand out during his tenure with us as a creative person. I fired him because he promised to work a scaffold match in Evansville. I booked the match and it was a sellout crowd. At belltime for the match, Paul advised that he feared working the match and refused to work the match. I often wondered how he handled wrestlers who didn’t keep their word to him or didn’t follow his instructions as a promoter.”
Heyman then moved to the AWA where he managed what was billed as the original Midnight Express: Dennis Condrey (the original partner of Bobby Eaton) and Randy Rose (who’d used the name in an early grouping alongside Condrey and Koko Ware.) By this stage Heyman had designs on becoming a booker, although as Missy Hyatt tells FSM, this wasn’t an easy career path.
“Becoming a booker was extremely difficult in wrestling, especially if the person was in their twenties. Usually a booker with prior experience would find work by cranking out similar ideas that worked for them in a previous territory. It was very cliquish to even apply for the job, since so many stooges could tear the person down out of fear for their jobs.
“Paul once made some suggestions to Verne Gagne’s booking & he snapped at Heyman to go ahead and write a better TV taping. Heyman would later come back with a TV booking sheet. Instead of Verne reading the booking sheet to see if Heyman had fresh ideas for his outdated product, he would instead gripe about how it was all wrong, since it was written in pen instead of pencil.”
Hyatt spotted Heyman in 1988 when he worked the small Deep South Wrestling group in Georgia. As her partner Eddie Gilbert had just taken over the booking in the Continental group in Alabama, she suggested Heyman for both a creative and on-screen role.
“Eddie was still in his twenties, which is pretty young for a booker (though he technically had 10 years in the business), and was very open minded to molding young talent. Heyman & Eddie would bounce ideas off each other from morning to night on car rides & at home (Heyman lived with us for a while). Eddie trusted Heyman enough to carry out finishes if he was out of town. Eddie realized how difficult it was for new ideas to be presented by young people to the old regime. That’s probably why Eddie took an active interest in Paul Heyman’s ideas.”
During his spell in Continental, Heyman saw the potential for effective booking to boost business. Despite having a comparatively weak roster to work with — top stars included Pez Whatley, rebranded by the pair as cult jobber Willie B Hert — Gilbert’s booking led to live gates tripling in the space of a few months. Just as impressively for Gilbert’s CV, if not the company’s accounts, his departure from the promotion at the end of the year was immediately followed by a major collapse in business.
Heyman followed Gilbert to Ted Turner’s newly acquired WCW where he memorably made a shock debut with Rose and Condrey: the pair invaded a live TV broadcast, destroyed the new Midnight Express of Eaton and Stan Lane, and left manager Jim Cornette a bloody mess. The angle was particularly impactful as Cornette made a point of wearing a white suit to enhance the effects of the flying crimson.
During his WCW run Heyman also managed Mean Mark Callous (the future Undertaker) while using his vocal talents in the announcing booth besides Jim Ross, who later told WWE.com that “He never failed to deliver the goods when we sat down to broadcast an event or weekly program. He knew how to provide a left-handed compliment to the fan favorites and how to properly embellish the villains, all the while being able to weave the wrestlers’ inner turmoils together, with the goal being to make the talent bigger stars.”
Despite his talents, Heyman’s personality brought trouble behind the scenes. In late 1990 he was suspended after taking the blame for leaking plans for Jerry Lawler to have a brief NWA title run as part of an inter-promotional feud. Upon his return at Hallowe’en Havoc 91, managing Rick Rude, he turned his genuine frustrations and anger into a memorable promo that referenced the real-life events for those who knew, while still logically fitting into storylines for the more casual audience — a trait that would be a hallmark of his later ECW booking.
Arguably Heyman’s finest on-screen run followed as he added Steve Austin, Bobby Eaton, Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko to his “Dangerous Alliance.” The grouping’s feud with WCW babyfaces dominated proceedings for the next six months, building up to a War Games match. The feud was so intricately booked that WCW Magazine produced a detailed chart explaining the storyline links between every competitor in the blow-off bout.
It’s probably little surprise that the abrasive Heyman clashed with WCW’s new boss, the equally strong personality Bill Watts. Whether it was a personal disagreement, an opportunity for cost-cutting, or a genuine disciplinary issue, Heyman got the boot over allegations he had filed fraudulent expense claims.
Heyman’s subsequent role in ECW has been widely documented. Suffice it to say that describing his tactics as “accentuating the positives and downplaying the negatives” may be a vastly over used cliche, but it also a true statement and it says a lot about wider pro wrestling booking that such a strategy should be even worthy of mention.
One aspect of the ECW years that is overlooked is that Heyman had now become the more experienced partner in his relationship with many of his roster. His spell running the promotion saw him move from his late-20s to his mid-30s, and he now followed in Gilbert’s footsteps — quite literally given that he took over creative control of ECW from him.
Missy Hyatt believes that “the generosity and time that Eddie devoted to Heyman was passed down when Heyman was booking ECW to the next generation that worked closely with him.” That’s certainly a view shared by Lance Evers, who wrote in FSM in 2009 that “Lance Storm was in me all along and for the most part he was my creation, but Paul was the catalyst: he was the one that helped me find myself and discover who Lance Storm really was.”
Storm, who worked as an ECW booking assistant in the promotion’s later years wrote on his website that “The joy I experienced working my best matches or wrestling in front of the largest and hottest crowds paled in comparison to the joy I felt booking angles with Paul and then sitting back and watching those angles transpire. He and I would get goose bumps creating the ideas then again watching them unfold.”
Gabe Sapolsky, who worked as an assistant in ECW before booking in Ring of Honor, Dragon Gate USA and EVOLVE tells FSM that Heyman taught him “so many important lessons that have defined who I am as a person and as a booker. I think the biggest credit to Paul is how unselfish he is in teaching and sharing his knowledge.
“He was definitely able to explain his reasons for doing different things. I had many late night/early morning phone calls with him after ECW shows where he would explain why certain things were booked. These were lectures. I was very lucky he took that time with me. ”
Although its last shows took place a few weeks earlier, many in the company saw the real end of ECW as the moment when Paul Heyman showed up without notice on Monday Night Raw, replacing the departing Jerry Lawler and reuniting his broadcast partnership with Jim Ross. After a standout performance announcing WrestleMania X7, Heyman would become a key player in the WWE vs WCW/ECW Invasion storyline, albeit often playing second-fiddle to Shane and Stephanie McMahon.
His best remembered appearance came on the final Smackdown before the feud’s conclusion at Survivor Series when he berated Vince McMahon for his lack of respect for the history of the wrestling business. Whether McMahon felt the comments struck a nerve or simply weren’t going to appeal to the modern audience, parts of the promo were removed before broadcast.
Having been banished after WWE’s triumph, Heyman returned in March 2002 as the manager and mouthpiece of Brock Lesnar who received a truly monster push, going undefeated before winning the WWE title just five months after his debut. Heyman not only assisted Lesnar on screen but reportedly advised him behind the scenes on how to present himself and protect his character.
TV viewers saw Heyman turn on Lesnar, costing him the world title, before having a run as Smackdown general manager and a brief spell with the Dudley Boys. During this period he became more involved in the creative process and is heavily credited with masterminding the “Smackdown Six” period. This took place a few months into the roster split when the idea was to differentiate Raw and Smackdown.
With Raw being largely storyline driven (a “higlight” being HHH dry humping a mannequin billed as Kane’s deceased girlfriend Katie Vick), Smackdown backed-up Lesnar’s initial title run with a series of lengthy matches in a three way feud between Kurt Angle & Chris Benoit, Edge & Rey Mysterio, and Chavo & Eddie Guerrero.
Critics have questioned whether there was any great booking talent in simply throwing together quality matches, an argument similar to that put forward by Heyman himself in downplaying his role in Mick Foley’s “anti-hardcore” ECW interviews. “If a head coach in football has a quarterback that can throw the ball into the end zone every single time you place the ball in that quarterback’s hands, is that head coach a genius? Or a ‘mad scientist’? Or a great producer? No, that coach just knows the right guy who can score touchdowns at will.”
On the other hand, it can be argued there’s a skill in showing the restraint to avoid coming up with intricate storylines and backstage skits purely for the sake of showing off your own creativity, saving such tactics for those performers who genuinely need it.
Heyman’s next creative challenge came in Ohio Valley Wrestling where he took over booking duties from Jim Cornette in 2005. He brought a distinct change of style: where Cornette had opted for a Memphis (and indeed ECW) format of exposing multiple characters to make every match on major shows important, Heyman’s OVW tended to concentrate on building up a few stars via consistently lengthy matches. It was certainly a change of pace from the Cornette era, though the pair shared a passion for consistent logical storytelling, a fact that became clearer in hindsight once Tommy Dreamer took over from Heyman.
Heyman’s tactics may have been a response to the fact that he could never rely on talent sticking around for a long time: he later claimed 30 performers got WWE call-ups during his run. This included five of the most talented members of the roster, who left simultaneously to become the Spirit Squad, while another leading star Matt Capotelli had to retire after diagnosis with a brain tumor.
One man who clearly benefitted from the Heyman era was Ken Anderson. As well as developing the idea of Anderson’s arrogant character including a self-introduction, Heyman also suggested he pitch the name “Ken Kennedy” upon his WWE arrival. This wasn’t purely for neat alliteration, but also a subtle — and effective — way to play on the ego of Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
But Heyman’s OVW era was most closely associated with CM Punk who became the focus of both the promotions TV show and Heyman’s weekly reports to WWE executives, leaving him perplexed at the lack of call-up to the main roster. Interviewed for Punk’s recent DVD release, creative team member Michael Hayes revealed the ironic truth: WWE staff were so aware of Heyman’s creativity with the truth, they simply didn’t trust that Punk had the talent to match his billing.
Punk did eventually get his call-up when ECW was revived as a weekly TV show in 2006 following a successful reunion PPV the previous year. Fans hoping for a revival of Heyman’s booking style were out of luck though. Whether he was simply telling people what they wanted to hear, or if plans changed, Heyman’s advance claims that the show would have a fresh feel and feature overseas talent and contemporary music videos proved inaccurate. Although featuring some new developmental talent and old Philadelphis favorites, barring some very minor cosmetic changes the new ECW TV show was very little different in concept or execution to other minor WWE programming such as Velocity or Heat.
The idea of running ECW-exclusive house shows was soon abandoned thanks to poor ticket sales, while the first PPV built up by the new TV show was a major flop. Just two matches were announced in advance which, to be fair, was an accurate tribute to several of the original ECW shows, as was the show going off air far earlier than expected. In the US market it proved the least successful full-price PPV in WWE history and when Heyman and Vince McMahon clashed over who deserved the blame, the result was inevitable: Heyman was out.
He was largely absent from the wrestling business for the next six years, concentrating on his Heyman Hustle website and projects with The Sun, while becoming a trusted advisor for Brock Lesnar during his UFC run. The closest he came to returning to the squared circle was exploratory talks with TNA which reportedly fell apart over his demands for an ownership stake in the company and complete control over the booking process. It has emerged that Heyman proposed putting a heavy emphasis on younger wrestlers (this coming after an influx of former WWE and WCW talent failed to kickstart business) and had warned it could take a year or more before such a strategy would pay off.
Returning to WWE this year he has become even more closely involved with Lesnar both on and off-screen, reportedly steering him through the political waters of backstage WWE and protecting his status as an outside character.
Working in the corner of CM Punk might seem an odd use of Heyman’s talent though: unlike Lesnar, Punk is perfectly comfortable with and accomplished at lengthy promos. But while the pairing has its benefits on screen, with Heyman’s ability to play a dislikable character helping firmly establish Punk as a heel despite his strong following, it may well be that the real payoff comes behind the scenes.
Make no mistake, Paul Heyman is always looking out for Paul Heyman (as Steve Austin wrote in his autobiography, ” I respect a lot of his opinions. I just wouldn’t want him doing my taxes or answering my phone”) and he’s always hunting to get his fingers in as many pies as possible, but that self-promotion usually benefits his chosen performers as well.
Heyman knows what it is like to be a fan from a young age, break into the business and thrive despite opposition from older, more traditional figures. He also shares Punk’s affinity for promos rooted in reality to bring genuine emotion to storylines. In turn he can advise on ways to smoothly bring backstage gripes into the world of kayfabe — something Punk occasionally struggled with in the wake of his initial star-making promos last year. And Heyman can continue living up to Sapolsky’s billing that ” He played a pivotal part in a lot of talent’s career, both in how they presented themselves in the ring and how they conducted business.”
Just like Eddie Gilbert more than two decades ago, the student has become the teacher.
