Paul Heyman may be a man who needs no introduction, but wrestling audiences would be feel robbed if he didn’t pick up a mic and introduce himself anyways.
Heyman has spent years lighting up WWE television screens as the ‘advocate’ of Brock Lesnar, and now the ‘Special Counsel’ for Roman Reigns, each time beginning every speech, in pointed inflection, “Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Paul Heyman”, and always following it up with a clear, passionate, magnetic message, with nary a wasted word.
Heyman may be one of the greatest to ever pick up a microphone, but he’s far more than just a great talker. He’s also one of the most influential promoters that the industry has ever seen, owning and running Extreme Championship Wrestling from 1993 until it folded in 2001, which birthed such careers at those of the Dudley Boyz, Rob Van Dam and Tazz, and changed both the style and presentation of wrestling for the generation to come.
Behind the scenes in WWE, he also spent years running both WWE SmackDown in the early 2000s and then WWE Raw again from 2019 to 2020, always putting the spotlight on the hungriest talent and giving them the opportunity to thrive, as well as either transforming or reigniting the careers of wrestlers such as Big Show, Kurt Angle, Rob Van Dam and CM Punk beside them as an on-screen talent.
Currently, Heyman is a busy man in WWE, hosting WWE Talking Smack every Saturday after SmackDown airs, a talk show that allows more in depth interview with WWE Superstars, as well as standing by the side of the WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns.
Ahead of Reigns’ upcoming championship match against WWE Hall-of-Famer Edge, Esquire Middle East had a zoom call with Heyman to discuss his thoughts on what matters in life, which wrestlers are poised to hit the next level, how Reigns was able to achieve his current status, as well as the state of WWE as a whole.
Read our full conversation below:
What struck you most about going to Saudi Arabia, experiencing those fans experiencing that sort of energy? What was unique about it?
Well, for me, what was the most unique thing about Saudi Arabia is that we had no idea what to expect just in terms of the audience’s acclimation to the product. Brock Lesnar and I go out to the ring, and this is when I’m doing the the schtick of introducing Brock. So you know, ‘ladies and gentlemen, my name is Paul Heyman, the reigning, defending’, and so on, and there’s 60 to 70,000 people in the stadium in Saudi Arabia. And they’re all doing it with me!
It’s one thing here in the States, or in the UK, or in Europe, or even in Australia, or South Africa, where we know what our penetration of our TV product is, it’s one thing to expect it, and to revel in it. But when you’re in front of that many people in a place that you don’t know—I had no idea just how many people would know the intimate details of our product, let alone the fact my introduction, which in and of itself is an elongated catchphrase. To have 70,000 people do it with me is as close as I’m going get to being Freddie Mercury at Live Aid.
It just blew me away, and it was very eye opening as to just how global the WWE product is. You could take LeBron James over to Saudi Arabia. I don’t know how many people know who he is. You can take UFC over to certain parts of the world. And either the fighters are enormous stars, or they’re not known at all. And here, every place in the world that I’ve been exposed to, even if I haven’t toured there, is very up to date on the WWE product. It’s the global distribution of this brand is just mind boggling.
And then the passion is just so pure and unadulterated. It’s just a pure love that I love about that. I love that about the region. It’s really beautiful.
Yes. Yes!
Did you have any behind the scenes moments when you were in Saudi? Any interactions that stuck with you?
We weren’t there long enough. The jet would land, [Brock Lesnar and I] would clear customs, we’d get to the hotel, take a very quick nap, have a meal, a morning—well, not that I’m working out—but a morning workout. Then we’d go to the stadium, do our job and we’re jetting out right after the show. Some of the trips to Saudi Arabia weren’t even 20 hours on the ground.
If I may ask, Paul, how are you doing? How different are your concerns, and what’s on your mind, on an average day now compared to a year ago, when things were quite different, not only in the world, but also just for you personally?
My concerns in life have been always just the health of my children. As long as my children are healthy, I think everything else in life is relative. So my children, thankfully, are very healthy. So I really have nothing to b*tch, moan or complain about. It really ends with that.
If you ever seen a parent of a child who doesn’t have their good health, you realize just how blessed you are when your children are healthy. And everything else in life—financial stress, politics, the world in and of itself, whether you’re happy with what what’s going on in your career or not, everything else is very relative. If your children are healthy, everything else is a matter of perspective.
Within WWE, let’s go back to when you were in charge of Raw. Obviously, I’m relying on dirt sheets for this, so excuse me for that, but one of your main concerns is the fact that you were really trying to do whatever you could to get greater opportunities for the talent that you saw that was underserved, that have the potential.
And now it seems you’re doing a similar thing. You’re trying to push people like Big E, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Cesaro, to the next level, but you’re doing it on camera as the host of Talking Smack. Do you see that as your main motivating factor right now?
Well, I think if you take a look at my career in this industry, it’s always been about pushing and promoting marketing new talent. How do you get new fresh, different blood into the main event tier? That’s the only way for an industry to survive, and indeed, thrive. You have to have new matchups, you have to have new people in the mix. Otherwise, the product goes stale.
The very first event I ever promoted, was when I was 19 years old at Studio 54, the world’s most famous nightclub in New York City. That was where I not only gave an award to Ric Flair, but I also presented the pro wrestling debut of Bam Bam Bigelow. With all this media there, I opened my career introducing a new star.
“He needed some seasoning. He needed some age in his face. Roman Reigns could not have pulled off this presentation even two years ago, he wasn’t ready for it.”
In ECW, it was the same thing. It was creating new stars of our own. We didn’t rely on the cast-offs from WWE, WCW, etc. We built new stars because we needed always new fresh blood on top. So my role as the lead writer of SmackDown 19 years ago was the same thing. We made Edge a singles star, we broke the Guerreros out into the top mix.
We brought in Rey Mysterio as a top star. It was always the concept of building, making and marketing new people into the main event mix. So when I became the executive director of Raw, it was the same thing. It was about who can now become the next big star in WWE.
How do you feel now that you know a lot of the people that you know you believe them are not necessarily doing as well, like Andrade, for example, just doesn’t seem to have the same spark that he did when you were working with him more closely.
WWE is like any other business. It constantly redefines itself and constantly assesses its placement in the marketplace, and it’s constantly disrupting its own business model. The cream will rise to the top, as the saying goes. There are great talents. And the people that I chose are not people that—the people that I chose to promote, are not charity cases, they are extraordinarily talented men and women. And they will find the trajectory to the top.
They will, because they’re top stars that are waiting to happen. Whether that path is as smooth as I tried to make it—and admittedly, I tried to put everybody on a fast track—or not, is a matter of conjecture. But these are extraordinarily talented people. And they will find their way to the top of the industry.
What do you think allowed someone like Roman to make that turn, to bring himself to the level that he is at now that is something that really only happens, I think, a few times every generation. What allows him to do it and what doesn’t allow others to do it?
Roman Reigns is a subject and a category all unto himself. Roman Reigns had to main event for nine years, had to main event WrestleMania multiple times, consecutively, in order to find the best presentation of Roman Reigns. And he also needed some seasoning. He needed some age in his face. Roman Reigns could not have pulled off this presentation even two years ago, he wasn’t ready for it. He didn’t look the role. He was still—he still looked too young.
Now, when you look in his face, you can see some of the wars that he’s been through. You can see the years of main eventing have presented a burden to the man behind the persona, that he has to carry not only his family, but as the top star in sports entertainment. He has to carry WWE, and indeed he has to carry the entire industry in terms of public perception. And you get to see that in his face now. And you couldn’t see that in his face, even if it was true, just a couple of years ago.
“There are great talents. And the people that I chose are not people that—the people that I chose to promote, are not charity cases, they are extraordinarily talented men and women. And they will find the trajectory to the top.”
So what allows Roman Reigns to resonate today? The reason why the connection to the audience and with the audience is so strong is because you’re seeing how this man actually feels. And he looks at the part when he says these words. He could have said these words with the same delivery and the same greatness two years ago, but it wouldn’t hit home as much because now he truly looks the part as well.
One of the biggest potential matches out there is Brock versus Roman, and that’s a story that you would be at the centre of. Is that something that you think about, is that something you’ve discussed with Brock, or is that really just off of your mind completely?
I think there’s a lot of big money matchups. For Roman Reigns, Brock Lesnar is absolutely positively one of them. But Roman Reigns versus The Rock is also huge box office. Roman Reigns one more time against John Cena would be huge box office. Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre at a WrestleMania would be huge box office.
And I can’t discount, and I think we would all be remiss to discount, some of the new stars in WWE that I have had these discussions with on Talking Smack. Big E, Apollo Crews. Those are two people, just for example, that could truly step up into the main event on a global basis atmosphere and become the huge box office attraction that Roman Reigns needs to Main Event against at a WrestleMania.
I can’t tell you that next year’s WrestleMania shouldn’t be Roman Reigns versus Big E or Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre Roman Reigns versus Apollo Crews. These are huge superstars stepping into their own the same way Roman Reigns stepped into his own last August.
What about Roman Reigns versus Parker Bordreaux?
Parker Bordreaux is a very interesting human being that took his education very seriously. He’s not just a meathead. He’s a six foot three, six foot four 300 pound athlete who has one hell of the head on his shoulders. So Parker Bordreaux is doing what everyone else does. He’s starting from the bottom. He has reported to the WWE Performance Center. And he’s got to work his way up to the top. There’s a lot of roadblocks on the way. Do I think he can navigate them? Absolutely.
Bobby Steveson is in his class. Bobby Stevenson is from the University of Minnesota, Brock’s alumni. It’s a Bobby Steveson’s brother Gable Steveson has publicly declared his intention to either go to the Olympics UFC or WWE. And he’s the number one college wrestler on the face of the planet today.
Rick Steiner’s son is in is in the current PC class. There’s someone else that could truly become a huge star for the next 20 to 25 years. So there’s a crop out there of hot talent that’s ready to become the next generation of WrestleMania main events. Parker Bordreaux has some very stiff competition to deal with.
He absolutely does. What are your conversations like with Brock now? I know when CM Punk stepped away, you guys kept talking, but you would talk about True Detective. Is it a similar sort of thing with Brock? I mean, do you guys talk about wrestling, or do you just talk about other stuff?
Brock Lesnar is a very private man. And in the 20 years that we have been friends and business associates, we have never had a cross word. And the reason why is because I never discussed Brock Lesnar’s personal life with anybody. So any discussions that I have with Brock Lesnar are exactly that. They are discussions with Brock Lesnar. And they will remain solely with Brock Lesnar unless Brock makes the decision to discuss them with anybody.
In terms of the WWE moving over to Peacock, what are the ramifications that you consider in that? Obviously I know that we’re so far away from that the traditional pay-per-view model, how much do you think that affects the future of WWE in the way that things are handled behind the scenes?
I don’t know the ramifications behind the scenes, because ultimately, we’re in the content creation business. And anybody in the content creation business will tell you, if they know what they’re talking about, that there are three tend to polls to that, to that marketplace, content finance and distribution. You have to have content.
Well, we have content. We have World Wrestling Entertainment and the shows that we produce. You have to have financing. This company is very well financed so we can afford to put out the content and to pay for the content that we envision producing, and distribution. Distribution has become the major focus of any business plan. Look at the enormous investment that was made in the Star Wars brand. And how that led to Netflix losing one of its biggest content providers so that they could distribute Star Wars on their own.
“It’s a true story. It was a three minute fart. And it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life.”
The streaming model was demonstrated by the music industry as the future, the business model of WWE has not changed much. It’s still ‘let’s produce content and get the top dollar for that content that we can to the benefit of our shareholders’. Where that content goes, whether it’s local television, cable television, linear cable, a paywall, WWE-owned and operated network, or Peacock paying a license for the distribution of that content is all the same.
It’s still producing content, and then distributing it to the highest dollar imaginable. But that’s the business model of any content provider today. Movie studios are looking at Netflix far more than they are a traditional rollout of a movie with a movie premiere. And, you know, ‘available in theaters near you’.
Now that we’ve had, you know, seven years to analyse the financials compared to, for example, UFC, do you think moving away from a pay-per-view model was a mistake? That the model has been really successful for UFC Do you think that it would be for WWE now too?
No, I don’t think that we’ve moved away from a PPV model. I think we’ve added revenue-generating opportunities to the business model. Before producing television was either at a loss or a minor profit. Now, producing television is a billion dollar enterprise for WWE. And not just with one global international media conglomerate like NBCU, but also with Fox. So WWE has multiple distribution channels to put their content out, and that content now is profitable.
Television 15 years ago, wasn’t the golden goose. It certainly is today. That is in addition to offering premium shows, which I don’t know if the word ‘pay-per-view’ any longer applies. But calling WrestleMania, SummerSlam, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, all these shows, if we label them pay-per-views, it’s still an important part of the lore to get people to subscribe to the network, or to subscribe to Peacock in order to see WWE content offerings. It’s still a major part of the business plan. I don’t think we’ve moved away from it as much as we’ve added other billion dollar opportunities to the business model.
I have a very important question. Please, could you tell me about Paul Wight’s three minute fart in Alaska?
[Laughs] I’ll drop one hint about it. It was actually outside in 15 degree below zero weather. And I will stand by my story. He stunk up the entire state of Alaska.
It’s up to him to tell the rest of the story. And he probably can tell it better than I can. Because when he tells it, I laugh so hard that tears running down my face. But it’s a true story. It was a three minute fart. And it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life.
On Talking Smack last week, you commented on the fact that Christian ‘ran away’ from Roman Reigns. What are your thoughts in a landscape in which things can happen so unexpectedly?
It makes it all the more compelling to watch Roman Reigns on Friday nights on SmackDown. And to watch Paul Heyman’s uncensored, uninhibited commentary about things on Talking Smack.
Thank you so much.
The pleasure was all mine, Sir. Please enjoy Dubai.
We hope to get you over here soon.
I look forward to that.
