WWE News: Paul Heyman May Get Backstage Role Within WWE, Will He Help Floundering Creative Staff?
Paul Heyman may be known as a fantastic manager to the stars and advocate to the Beast of WWE, Brock Lesnar. Before all of this, however, he was a simple photographer who managed to weasel his way into WWE when it was owned by Vince McMahon, Sr. In fact, he has taken some highly memorable photos for the WWE. He would end up eventually learning from some amazing people with great minds for the business such as the Grand Wizard, Freddie Blassie, and even Dusty Rhodes.
Heyman goes at length to all of this and more on his DVD, which is a must buy. Due to all of this knowledge, he would get involved in things creatively with ECW and would go on to own it. He would change the format from just normal wrestling and Eastern Championship Wrestling to a hardcore style and name change to Extreme Championship Wrestling. It would work out well for ECW and even forced both WCW and WWE to add hardcore wrestling in order to compete.
Paul Heyman was not a dumb man and due to ECW’s financial issues after a while, he would make a deal with Vince McMahon, Jr. of the WWE. McMahon would pay money to help ECW and get talent in the process. Heyman would also get people sent to him on the ECW banner as well, which helped WWE because they would develop under Heyman. Eventually, ECW was sold off to Vince McMahon and then WCW was also sold off around the same time to WWE, both in 2001 right before WrestleMania 17 that year.
This led WWE to hire Paul Heyman originally as a commentator and eventually he would lead the creative team on the WWE SmackDown brand while he was General Manager. SmackDown would become one of the top shows for WWE and even beat WWE RAW in the ratings. This led McMahon to move some stars over to RAW in order to help the red brand bring up ratings. Heyman clearly has an ability to help in so many ways, but when the creative team issues led to problems with WWE, Heyman was put in OVW, which he actually enjoyed before leaving WWE after the launch of the failed WWE version of ECW.
Paul Heyman would come back to WWE when Brock Lesnar made his return back in 2012, mainly because Lesnar truly needed someone to talk for him. Brock has never been known as the best talker, despite what his UFC press conferences and speeches might show. Similar to Lesnar, Heyman has a WWE contract as well….but it was structured a bit differently. He’s under a normal deal and not a per date deal like Brock.
Heyman actually just re-signed with WWE, but many did not know what he added to his deal if anything. It now seems like he may have added some interesting things. According to Daily Wrestling News, Paul Heyman asked WWE about expanding his role behind the scenes. While uncertain if this was part of his new contract, the one thing known is that Heyman did ask about this in the past few months now.
The word on Vince McMahon’s thoughts here is that he is very open to the idea of having creative input again by Paul Heyman. The thought is that WWE could really use more people who have a solid idea on the business due to all of the Hollywood writers WWE has hired over the years. WWE has hired people who have worked on TV shows and reality TV as well over the years and things often times have been a bit…out there at times.
Many think the problem is the TV-PG rating, but that isn’t the case at the end of the day due to the fact that you still need good creative with a more mature rating. Paul Heyman could easily help WWE once again when it comes to creative and helping new stars shine. Heyman is known for being great with young talent and developing people. On top of this, he proved when he ran SmackDown creative that he knew how to do well creatively under the WWE banner. So it could be a good thing if Heyman returns in such a role for WWE.
[Featured Image by WWE]
