Paul Heyman: I Never Chose To Promote Charity Cases, People I Promoted Were Extraordinarily Talented

Paul Heyman, who has booked and promoted professional wrestling inside of four decades, reflects on what makes the talent that he promotes special.

From Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar, to CM Punk and Mick Foley, many top stars in the wrestling industry have been helped along the way by Paul Heyman.

In a new interview with Esquire Middle East, Paul Heyman was asked about his primary motivation when it comes to working with talents. Paul, who also has a track record of promoting names that aren’t perceived highly by decision-makers at first, spoke about the industry’s unrelenting need for fresh faces and new matchups.

“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 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 talents that tend to sit on the sidelines, such as Andrade, Paul Heyman, without ever addressing Andrade by name despite the interviewer naming him, simply spoke about the cream always rising to the top and said he never booked charity cases he booked extraordinarily talented people.

“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 that he’s no longer a member of the need to be creative, Paul Heyman’s main focus is Roman Reigns and Roman Reigns says he never wants to work without Paul Heyman again. Read Roman’s thoughts on Paul Heyman here.