Former WWE manager Dutch Mantell has said that Paul Heyman ‘killed’ Cesaro’s push in the company.
Cesaro, now Claudio Castagnoli, left WWE in February 2022 after never having the World Championship run countless fans were hoping to see.
In 2014, Cesaro was managed by Mantell (then Zeb Coulter) but announced that he was a ‘Paul Heyman Guy’ on the post-WrestleMania 30 RAW.
In a recent interview with Wrestling Shoot Interviews, Mantell spoke about the Real Americans, a stable of himself, Cesaro and Jack Swagger (now Jake Hager):
“He’s getting over. We’re all getting over with this threesome here. Well Vince, he wants to put him with Heyman and then I said, ‘why?’ They said, ‘Vince thinks he can get him heat’. He was getting over with us, he really was and they put him with Heyman and then three weeks later they took him from Heyman because Heyman killed him too.”
While fans were excited at the time for Heyman to manage Cesaro, the ECW alum spent most of their run together praising Brock Lesnar, who had broken The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak.
