Through its existence, the mainstream media has mostly viewed wrestling as a bottom of the barrel part of the entertainment business. By many, wrestling is seen as the redheaded stepchild of theater. Critics believe people in the business are not smart enough to run a real company, not talented enough to make it in a real sport, or not believable enough to be a real actor. Critics also believes fans are pea-brained, ne’er-do-wells with nothing better to do. Even though the curtain was pulled down decades ago, a lot of people view wrestling as a deceitful and fraudulent business that takes advantage of gullible people. It is as if wrestling-haters are mad about being “fake” and feel it is their duty to tell fans it is fake in a condescending manner. However, wrestling fans laugh at most stereotypes about them, knowing they are are false. Many wrestling fans have jobs, some of them have a college degree, while most wrestlers joined the business because they love it, and there a number of smart people who were or still are in the business.
Vince McMahon might be go-to person to prove naysayers wrong. He is a mastermind, both from an inventiveness and marketing standpoint. He is a hardworking, enthusiastic and uber-competitive entrepreneur, who took a small territorial wrestling promotion and transformed it into a global phenomenon in no time. He also turned wrestling into a trendy, must-see spectacle not once, but twice. In terms of being creativeness and influence, few come close to McMahon.
One person has come close, though, and he is unafraid to tell people his name, either. His name is Paul Heyman….
Heyman has done it all. He owned his own company, ECW. He was the lead writer of both Smackdown and OVW. He managed some of the biggest names in wrestling, including Steve Austinand Brock Lesnar. He was an awesome color commentator. He even wrestled before…well, at least tried. He is seen by many as a wrestling genius while some even believe he has the most creative mind in wrestling’s history. They could be right…
In the 1990s, a radical cultural change happened. The 80s were a free-spirited, happy-go-lucky time, but the 90s evolved into a more dirty and gritty era. Pop and disco were no longer popular, grunge and rap were becoming very popular. The entertainment businesses were adjusting to the change to stay with the times…except for wrestling. WWE tried shoehorning their cartoon product, with goodie-goodie protagonist and one-dimensional antagonists while WCW could not decide what they wanted to be. Both product’s booking philosophies were stagnant and mundane, recycling the same timeworn characters and storylines and using the same formulas to construct its shows. Both companies attempted to rekindle the magic by doing what worked in the past worked in the past. Lighting did not strike twice, though. They barely gained any fans and tormented the brave ones who stuck around.
Both companies were stuck in their inner-bubbles, unaware of how out-of-date they were. McMahon ran dry of new ideas and WCW kept shooting themselves in the foot by allowing people with no wrestling knowledge to make critical decisions. By the mid-1990s, people were giving both wrestling its last rites. Then, a small indie promotion, known as ECW, pumped blood back into wrestling’s pulse. The company was more than a hardcore promotion. It was a revolutionary one that helped make wrestling socially relevant again. Surely, the company never gained tons of fans or made millions of dollars. It was simply the lighter fluid that sparked perhaps the best era in wrestling.
ECW is a lot like the sitcom Seinfeld. It was pioneering show that knew people were tired of clichéd drivel being used over and over again. For that reason, ECW revolutionized wrestling by introducing something people have never seen before. These days, many people find ECW to be overrated. It is far from true. Surely, ECW does not face the test of the time well. For the time, though, it was very influential. It might have been too influential for its own good, actually. WWF and WCW copied their ideas and stole their talent to a point where ECW could not recover.
Nevertheless, Heyman made ECW by looking at both WCW and WWE’s shortcomings. WWF looked like a cartoon, so he made ECW realistic. WCW’s wrestling style was out-of-date, so he introduced a faster-paced and style, technical style, crazy hardcore style and so forth. WWF and WCW had its own wrestling styles, so ECW had a variety of styles. Both had black and white characters, so ECW had multifaceted and shades of gray characters. WWE and WCW still used white-meat protagonists, so ECW used antiheroes. You get the point, right?
Even when WCW and WWF raided Heyman’s talent, he made use of the rejects no one wanted. He accentuated their strengths and hid their weaknesses, turning nobodies into the hottest free agents on the market. He took a funny looking drunk who could not wrestle at all, and he turned him into Sandman. He took an undersized, husky wrestler, and he and turned him into Tazz . He took a generic-looking jobber with the a basic move set and bland personality, and he turned him intoTommy Dreamer. He took a “Hollywood Blonde”, helped hone his craft by allowing him to be a foul-mouth, in-your-face antihero, enabling him to become the biggest act in wrestling history….you might know him as Stone Cold Steve Austin. Despite having limited budget and resources and the bigger companies stealing his ideas and wrestlers – Heyman created a company that still lives through its spirit, to this day.
After being a terrific foil to Jim Ross in a color commentating role, WWE gave Heyman a shot to display his creativeness in 2002. Before he became the lead writer, SmackDown was more of a nuisance than anything else. WWE put little effort into it. The company actually thought it diluted and overexposed the product and considered scrapping it. McMahon instead re-branded it, making it its own show instead of a continuation of Raw. He wanted the Raw and SmackDown team to compete for superiority, though he never wanted SmackDown to become the number one WWE show.
Crafty Paul Heyman not only slaughtered Raw from a creative perspective. He also eventually drew better ratings. WWE tried hinting to its fans Raw was the A-Show, although people did not care and preferred to watch the vastly superior show. Smackdown had superb in-ring work, masterful stories, and shrewd booking, causing it become one of the best shows in wrestling history.
McMahon could easily have fixed this problem by making Heyman the head writer of Raw. Surely, Heyman could be a drama queen and hard to deal with, but it would have been more than worth the headaches. On a bigger platform, the sky was the limit. Heyman could have brought Raw to places it has never been. However, Vince McMahon could never allow this to happen. His ego was too big. He needed to be the smartest man in the room at all times. So, WWE missed a golden opportunity and later came up with a sad excuse to get Heyman off the Smackdown team.
Heyman started booking OVW (Ohio Valley Wrestling, WWE’s developmental program). He did wonders there too. He created great angles and storylines. Of course, OVW was way too small to ever grow to Smackdown or Raw’s heights, so Vince McMahon was fine with what he was doing. Around this time, Shane McMahon thought it would be a good idea for a Rise and Fall ECW documentary. Vince McMahon agreed to it, although never thought it would do well. The DVD ended up being WWE’s best seller to date. McMahon then capitalized off this. He ran two ECW PPVs (both did great buyrates) and then launched a ECW weekly program.
ECW was clearly WWE’s C-Show, but even then, McMahon still would not allow Heyman to have creative freedom. Both had completely different envisions of what the show should be. The show became a train-wreck and then McMahon fired Heyman, blaming him for the show’s lack of the success. McMahon bit his nose off to spite his face, allowing a genius to walk just around the time TNA was started to grow.
TNA had prime-time television, a stacked roster and a big budget. They ultimately had all the resources they needed. They just needed a good booker. Because after Dusty Rhodes left, they hired Vince Russo – who was screwing up the company with his crash-style TV booking. Laughably, TNA never called Paul Heyman into 2009. After Vince Russo turned TNA into a laughing stock with his nonsensical booking, Dixie Carter looked to see if Heyman was interested. Instead of Dixie Carter begging for him to save her company, the two never came to an agreement due to creative differences.
When it seemed Heyman would never return to wrestling, he shockingly became Brock Lesnar’s advocate with his career going in a full circle. Symbolic to his career, Heyman overachieved in his role. He became a highlight of every show he appeared on because of his amazing promos. No doubt, he is a master at talking. He understands the importance of pausing, emphasizing meaningful words and using the proper facial expressions. He portrays his persona to perfection. He also knows how to make Brock Lesnar sound awesome. The way he talks about Lesnar and upcoming his matches just makes both more important. He will cleverly take something impressive Lesnar did and make it sound like it was the best thing ever to happen in wrestling all because of the way he sells it. For example, when Lesnar conquered the streak. Both Lesnar and Heyman were even in awe when it happened. The next night Heyman exaggerated what happened. The match was a back-and-forth battle. Heyman sold it as a lopsided beating, and he knew it would happen. Some wrestler try jamming hyperbole down our throats, and we roll our eyes at it. When Heyman does it, fans either believe it or it makes them mad. He does it by making logical claims and acting as if he truly believes it.
Heyman came back to WWE to help his friend. In that time, he has done so many wonderful things for WWE. He band-aided dubious booking decisions like Triple H defeating Brock Lesnar at WM 29 by making clever excuses why Lesnar lost. His promos have also sold Lesnar’s matches better than the stories themselves have. Some have Heyman as the runner-up behind Bobby Heenan. I do not think it is close now. Heyman has solidified himself as the best mouthpiece ever. His promos are illustrations of verbal art, blueprints on how to articulate sentiments in eloquent manner, and the provide the guidelines on how to tell a compelling story with words.
He has found infinite ways to entertain fans, give them what they want and, in the process, solidified himself as one of the most important minds in wrestling history. For those reasons and more, I want to thank him for his amazing contributions to this business, finding ways to be awesome, and reminding me why I love this oftentimes frustrating and peculiar source of entertainment called professional wrestling. He is without a shadow of the doubt one of the smartest wrestling minds ever.
