WWE Hall of Famer Paul Heyman spoke on a panel at Fanatics Fest in New York City and received questions from fans. We’ve included a few highlights from the panel.
On getting put through a table during Monday Night RAW:
“Well, they have to do that. I mean that. That’s the exclamation point of what they’re doing. At some point, for Solo to become the tribal chief, for Tama Tonga to become the right hand man, for Jacob Fatu to become the Enforcer, you have to take out the wise man. I’m the last link to the original Bloodline. I’m the last link to Roman Reigns. So if you don’t take me out, then you still have this extension of what the original Bloodline was. But for Solo to become the dictator of the island of relevancy, for Solo to take over as the tribal chief, at some point, the wise man has to go, and if you don’t take me out, then it’s just an extension. So there’s no better place for them to make their move than in Madison Square Garden, especially a week after Jacob Fatu debuted, and especially coming off all the momentum of his debut, and five weeks before SummerSlam, where Solo is going to challenge Cody Rhodes for the undisputed title. This was, in hindsight, the absolute perfect moment for them to make their move. But if they’re going to make their move, you can’t half ass it. You can’t just thump me in the throat and drop me. If you’re gonna go big. If you don’t go big, we don’t belong on the main stage at Madison Square Garden.”
On working with Triple H:
“I’ve always had a lot of respect for Paul Levesque. When we had ECW participation at Monday Night RAW, and I met him backstage, don’t know what the conversation was completely, but it was about Killer Kowalski in the manner in which he was trained, and the appreciation that he had for the history of the business, but the vision that he had that as much as I love the past, and I’m grounded in the rudimentary and the fundamental ways of the business, we gotta push it forward. Even back then, in ’97 I was like, wow, this guy has his finger on the pulse of the future. Working with Paul Levesque today is an absolute honor because he’s a collaborator. He loves to collaborate. He loves to hear different ideas and he likes to implement them.”
On CM Punk being at his Hall of Fame induction:
“CM Punk is back where he belongs, and that’s on top of WWE. Like any other rebel, you know, it’s the old song, you have to go through hell before you get to heaven. CM Punk, the struggle is real, and he is a rebel. To this day, he’s a rebel, but the rebel would never reach the top. The rebel will never get his due on his own merit if he doesn’t go through pure, blatant, bloody hell and that hell could not only be in WWE. He had to go through hell elsewhere as well, and everybody had to see it and hear about it and know about it and sit there and go, ‘My God, will somebody please, one time, give this talented man the platform that he deserves?’ It’s been over 20 years now that he’s been on the national stage and he still doesn’t get a chance to demonstrate his greatness, and now, truly,for the first time, he has a chance to step out from the hell that he’s been going through, and of course, again, having to pay his dues in front of the world and as soon as he’s getting started, he gets terribly injured and taken off the roster. So his fight to come back, and he came back months earlier than any doctor could have predicted because that’s how badly he wanted to get back into the mix and on top in WWE. So to see him in the front row with my children, was it surreal? No, actually, it was very, very, very real, and the Hall of Fame would not have been the same to me if that wasn’t the case.”
Thoughts on Brock Lesnar:
“Brock Lesnar always had it. Brock Lesnar always understood. Brock Lesnar always knew he was unique. He was different. He wasn’t going to be the same as everybody else, and the more he grew in stature and leverage, the more we could dictate the manner in which he was going to be presented. There’s no one like Brock Lesnar. I mean, even his most die hard competitors will tell you, there’s no one like Brock Lesnar. So we were not going to ever put him in a position where he was just gonna be like everybody else.”
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
