Paul Heyman: The People That I Chose To Promote Are Not Charity Cases, They’re Extraordinarily Talented
Photo Credit: Bill Pritchard
Paul Heyman looks back on his career as a promoter and his consistent decision to promote underutilized talent.
Paul Heyman has been in the wrestling business for decades. In that time, names like CM Punk, Mick Foley, Steve Austin, Brock Lesnar, and now Roman Reigns, all proudly call themselves “Paul Heyman guys.”
When asked by Esquire Middle East about his primary motivation when it comes to working with talent, Paul took the time to reflect on his existing promotional decisions and a broader look at wrestling as a whole and the constant need for new talent to rise to the top, whether decision-makers want it that way or not.
“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.”
He later added, “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 always needed 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.”
When asked about Andrade, a superstar who had made headlines recently for requesting his release, Paul Heyman said, without ever addressing Andrade by name, he has always booked extraordinary talent and the cream will always find itself rising to the top.
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“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.”
Now, Paul Heyman is solely focused on helping Roman Reigns build his legacy heading into WrestleMania 37 and beyond.