Paul Heyman recently spoke with Busted Open
Radio. Here are
the highlights…
On his early days in the business hustling to
get press passes: “I just didn’t want to be another face in the crowd.
I was a huge fan of the product. On Sunday my parents would go to the lower east
side of Manhattan because my Mother likes to shop there and my Father and I
would bum around before we picked up my Mother. One of the things My Father
liked to do was we would pick up these radical lower New York free news papers
with their own social agenda because their writing was always very passionate.
Whether we agreed with their politics or not doesn’t matter, you would find
great emotions in the writing. In one of these papers was a sports column and it
was more of a sports gossip column and the writer mentioned that after Madison
Square Garden, Vincent J McMahon would take his inner circle to lunch at Ben
Bensons Steak House in midtown Manhattan. Now I don’t know the readership of
this article, so I don’t know if a lot of old WWWF fans got to see this, so I
figured this was some inside information. I found out that the office was at the
Cape Cod Coliseum which was owned by Vincent J McMahon, so I called and said ‘My
name is Paul Heyman. I was told to call by Vince McMahon to get my press pass
for Madison Square Garden’. I’m put through 3-4 assistants until I got patched
through to Vince J McMahon. I said ‘This is Paul Heyman from the Wrestling
Times’ because we have The New York Times. I said ‘I was talking to you at Ben
Bensons and you said to call you about a press pass at Madison Square Garden.’
He said ‘I did?!’. I said ‘Yeah you did.’ Because who else would know he dines
at Ben Bensons and who would tell him that he was in a radical news paper in the
lower east side of New York with a readership of a couple hundred, so I must
have been real. He said ‘Go to the Holland Hotel at 42nd street and 8th Ave and
talk to Gorilla Monsoon and Arnold Skaaland and I look forward to seeing you at
the Garden.’ I got a ride down to the Holland Hotel and I saw Monsoon and
Skaaland playing pinnacle with a bottle of booze, I got my press pass, BS’d my
way into Madison Square Garden with my press pass and got in Vince Sr’s good
graces by snapping some photos with him and Andre The Giant and bringing him
some 8X10 the next month. For the rest of the time he was in charge, I would
bring pictures they could use in their programs or on posters and they would
give me 50 bucks for my transportation and trouble. I’ve always found that
honesty is dramatically overrated.”
On Brock vs. Cena at Summerslam:
“Brock Lesnar is going to beat John Cena. That’s not a prediction, that’s a
spoiler. Brock is going to win and it will bring more prestige and box office
draw to the championship title than anybody in the past 25 years. Brock Lesnar
is going to make that title mean more than it ever has before and people are
going to understand that when the title is on the line it is special and it’s
going to mean something.”
On the shock of Lesnar ending Undertakers
Streak and why people didn’t believe him when he announced that Taker will lose
to Lesnar: “You should have listened to me. I’m gonna tell you this
again, Brock Lesnar is going to deliver an F-5 that will drive Cena with such
force he will pin John Cena and win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. You
can believe what I’m telling you and you won’t be surprised next time you
interview me and you can say ‘every time Heyman says something it comes true.
He’s not Nostradamus and he doesn’t have a crystal ball or any special voodoo
powers’ Brock Lesnar is going to beat John Cena. Take it to the
bank.”
Where the moment Brock pinned the Undertaker
ranks in his career: “As an advocate and performer, it is the moment.
Absolutely. Nothing else is even close. John Cena brought it up on Monday night.
40 men have held the WWE championship. Only one man can say ‘I beat the streak’.
That’s a moment. The only equivalent I can give you is if someone was announced
as the President of the United States and someone comes up and says ‘I’ve been
elected God’. There have been a few men who ever had the title. Only one man
beat the streak.”
On his relationship with Vince McMahon
today: “Strictly platonic. I think Vince McMahon serves his company
well as the chairman and recognizes the talents and exploiting the ability of
Paul Heyman every Monday night on Raw.”
