Paul Heyman’s 5 Greatest Moments

The evil genius of professional wrestling has had an amazing career.

paul heyman
Source: WWE

Paul Heyman has become a household name in the world of professional wrestling. The former Paul E. Dangerously was born in Westchester County, New York in 1965 and had the gift of the gab from an early age. Working in the biggest wrestling promotions in the world like WCW, ECW, NWA, and now WWE, Heyman has surrounded himself with some of the biggest stars in the wrestling world.

A definite future Hall of Famer, Heyman has paved the way for many of the past and future superstars to thrive. When looking back, he has had some incredible moments throughout his career. We’re going to run down a list of his very best from his storied tale.

 

5. WWE Commentator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfO1AuUgoMg

One of the truly underrated commentary teams in professional wrestling was the duo of Paul Heyman and Jim Ross. Having one of the best talents for cutting promos in WWE really helped on commentary and meshing him with arguably the greatest commentator in history didn’t hurt either. In 2001, hot on the tails of the loss of Jerry “The King” Lawler from the company, there had to be a replacement and Vince McMahon found that replacement in Paul Heyman.

It only lasted for a short part of 2001, but it was one of the more enjoyable duos on the commentary table and Heyman proved again why he is a man of many talents. Nobody should have been surprised by how witty he was on the headset but he put up a fight against the greatest commentary colleague, Jim Ross. He did so good simply because he had such a history in the wrestling world, had tons of experience with banter back and forth, and played the villain in a way that nobody else can.

 

4. Smackdown General Manager

From 2003-2004, Paul Heyman was the boss of the blue brand. It wasn’t an incredible amount of time, but he played the part of an authority figure perfectly. He has publicly stated that he isn’t a fan of the general manager role and thinks that it has been played out. Even being against the position, he still had a memorable run and the biggest part of it had to be the Draft Lottery. Him and Eric Bischoff had great on camera chemistry and nobody could truly tell if it was a great performance of serious tension stemming from the destruction of Heyman’s company, ECW.

Heyman really wanted to focus on the behind the scenes issues like creative and writing for WWE, so there really is no telling how great this run could truly have been if Heyman was actually a fan of the general manager idea. We saw great feuds on Smackdown under his tenure with the likes of a young John Cena, Brock Lesnar, and Kurt Angle, but imagine the possibilities just a few years later with popular Smackdown wrestlers such as MVP, Ken Kennedy, and Batista. The general manager role is often a mentoring role and sharing his knowledge of promos and character development could skyrocket someone’s career.

 

3. Promo Masterclass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWAiVQHbRws

Looking back decades from now, people will always associate Paul Heyman with one attribute above all else: his promo ability. For a person in the professional wrestling world without an athletic body type, you have to come up with your own niche. Heyman found that in himself with how he could control the audience simply by how he talked to them. From the start of his career to the end, Heyman has maintained a consistent talent for mic work and is still finding ways to reinvent himself. He has made the introduction to his own name a phrase that fans bellow out in any stadium in the world.

Wrestlers such as Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock have given praise to Heyman for how much he helped them improve their promos early on in their careers. Stone Cold was tailspinning in ECW fresh off of a release from WCW and Heyman told him to speak simply from his heart, which can be looked at as the beginning of a legendary career for Austin. Heyman hits the punchline at the exact right time, such as ending with an obscenity as stated in hyping up the phrase “Suplex City, bitch”.

He has a great understanding of the human language and how to morph what most people would make a boring statement into an exuberant story of sorts. There is nobody in today’s WWE or all of professional wrestling for that case that would be able to consistently keep up with Heyman’s promos and that is a huge reason that he is as praised as he is.

 

2. Heyman Guys

Source: WWE

A short list of notable people who have been under the management umbrella of Paul Heyman are CM Punk, Brock Lesnar, Big Show, Rob Van Dam, and Kurt Angle. That list alone is full of future and current Hall of Famers. He has been mixed with wrestlers who are fantastic on the mics themselves, such as CM Punk, and some wrestlers who would rather just stick to competing like Brock Lesnar. Heyman doesn’t focus so much on old school managerial tactics such as Mr. Fuji and Jim Cornette, he works more as a promoter who hypes up his chosen athlete and lets them handle their business.

We can look back and see that Brock Lesnar’s second run with WWE has been incredibly successful due to the moment that him and Paul Heyman joined forces and Brock could forget about cutting promos. A wrestler like CM Punk didn’t even need the help with his promos but we still saw how they meshed together and created a duo that the fans loved to equally hate. We will definitely see Paul Heyman in the WWE Hall of Fame one day and a huge accomplishment they will talk about is how he got talent, whether heel or face, over with the audience by his undermining ways.

 

1. ECW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ifuqUsFCek

Extreme Championship Wrestling, stationed for the most part in Philadelphia, was a sort of “out of nowhere” promotion. When people were starting to get interested in the Monday Night Wars between WWE and WCW, they were all of a sudden hit with a third alternative for their professional wrestling needs. Paul Heyman created a vision for a new wrestling company that offered what the others weren’t — pure hardcore wrestling.

We saw matches like barbed wire massacre, death matches, and scaffold matches. Many wrestling fans were split on what to think of the former Extreme Championship Wrestling. Some thought the action was entirely too violent and risky while others thought it was a breath of fresh air to the professional wrestling industry.

We have seen many stars come from the land of extreme like Rob Van Dam, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, The Dudley Boyz, Raven and a slew of other superstars still wrestling to this very day. Heyman knew there was an untapped market and that he could try and make the wars a three team race. ECW never exactly ran with the two other major brands but they created a cult following that is still remembered and celebrated to this very day.  The company stopped operations in 2001 but here in 2019 whenever we see someone get hit with a chair or put through a table, you still hear some chants of ECW and that is a legacy that must be respected. Paul Heyman took a shot and for that, he will always be remembered.

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