Trivia / Paul Heyman

• Creator Backlash: Never, ever bring up his tenure at WCW to him.
  • When discussing the "Invasion" storyline on 'Inside the Ropes', Heyman admitted that he felt the whole thing turned out awful, and also took his share of the blame for it since he was a member of the creative team developing the angle.
• Enforced Method Acting: When Brock Lesnar beat The Undertaker's undefeated streak at WrestleMania, the only people who knew about the plan were Lesnar, 'Taker, Vince McMahon, Steph, and Triple H. Heyman sliding into the ring and screaming, "Oh my God!" until everyone else was let in on the plan were genuine.
• Executive Veto: CM Punk credits Paul Heyman for being allowed to keep his ring name and straight edge gimmick. Other "writers" have revealed one of the plans for Punk was to turn him into a male cheerleader, essentially a babyface version of The Spirit Squad. In fact, according to Heyman himself, he rebuffed numerous repeated memos from the top brass telling him to wind down Punk's storylines and fire him outright. Instead, he said they should fire Punk themselves if they cared so much. It took nine years, and it was only after Punk walked out on the company — by then, CM Punk was one of their three biggest draws.
• Promoted Fanboy: Heyman began in pro wrestling very young. How young? He began as a pro wrestling photographer when he was 13, published his own wrestling newsletter, wrote for third-party wrestling publications such as Pro Wrestling Illustrated, and at the age of 14, he obtained a backstage pass from WWF for Madison Square Garden, and met Dusty Rhodes at a Jim Crockett Promotions taping, when he entered a production meeting. There's even a photo of him with Freddie Blassie, Captain Lou Albano, and The Grand Wizard.
• Running the Asylum: While he mainly embodied this in ECW, bringing back the high flying, foreign objects and lucha libre type maneuvers that had not been in focus for a long time. He also put this into practice as GM of SmackDown, which had a reputation for being "the wrestling show" of WWE for a long time (Raw being the soap opera), even after Heyman eventually left, up until the brands merged back together.
• Star-Making Role: Despite having been a photographer, publisher, writer, manager, and announcer for several years before he was put with the stable; he credits becoming the manager of the Dangerous Alliance as the role that really put him on the map.
• What Could Have Been
  • Heyman said he turned down the offer to go in full-time with Jim Crockett Productions because he was being highly considered by a radio affiliate (Hot 97) to be their morning guy, opposite Howard Stern.
  • There's a story that Heyman was offered the booker position in TNA, but he was turned down because he wanted creative control and a large share in the company^note Quite a few people feel that Heyman asked for terms he knew TNA would never agree to because even he knew he couldn't do anything with that dumpster fire, and this let him turn down the job without actually turning it down and makes TNA look like the dumb ones. This is referred to as "babyfacing yourself" in wrestling circles.
  • A Paul Heyman autobiography was in the works... until the Brock Lesnar autobiography, which Heyman contributed to, was released to both critical and commercial disappointment. He did get a dedicated DVD covering his life and career when he returned to WWE, however.
  • After being fired from WCW for the final time in 1993 Paul Heyman had been tapped by a New York radio station to host a drive time talk show and go head-to-head with Howard Stern. The station felt Heyman's edgy style would get ratings and possibly eat into Stern's then-unprecedented listener base. Before Heyman could sign the deal, his old friend Eddie Gilbert called him up and goaded him into doing creative for NWA's Philadelphia-based promotion: Eastern Championship Wrestling. You already know the rest of the story.
  • A pretty dark case of this, but Tommy Dreamer admitted on his podcast in 2019 that, in a major fit of depression after the end of ECW, he very briefly considered going to WrestleMania X7 with a gun^note This was in the firearm possession law-lenient State of Texas in a pre-9/11 world, and as such, wasn't as implausible as it sounds to kill Heyman and then himself on live PPV. He was brought out of this thought by finding out that he'd be brought in to WWE in a few months.
    Dreamer: “When ECW went out of business I was 29 years old. I had a lot of my money, my parents’ money, trying to float the company. Paul Heyman, who I thought me and him were super tight, he screwed me over big time. He was in the WWE, the whole time. I had turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to WCW. And now was unemployed. I went from a $750,000 offer, and Paul Heyman crying to me, that if I leave ECW, it will go out of business. Meanwhile, he was getting a paycheck from WWE. I don’t begrudge him, but then I did. I was depressed as depressed can be. [...] At Wrestlemania, I was gonna hop the rail and I was gonna whack Paul E. in the back of the head right at the announce table, then I was gonna whack myself. The ultimate martyr, I was gonna hit my pose crack, boom, pull the trigger. Because I was that insane.”
• Write What You Know: Paul's advocate persona was based of his lawyer father.

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