Cult Cinema Saves The World
Paul Heyman is unique. If you know anything about the man, you’ll know that Paul Heyman started out at a very young age by somehow managing to blag his way into wrestling matches as a photographer, even though he was hardly out of short pants, before becoming a fixture in WCW as Paul E Dangerously. From there he went on to form ECW, and when that went under he went on to become a divisive but important part of WWE television, on and off-screen, which is still a role he holds today. And there is a reason behind this.
Paul Heyman has the gift of the gab and could sell snow to Eskimos.
Think about the greatest talkers the business has ever seen, and if you don’t have Paul Heyman in your top 5, then you don’t understand wrestling. He is a snake charmer; someone you go to when you need to get something or someone over. He can make you hate him and rope you into the angle he is trying to sell in the blink of an eye.
Think Bobby Heenan with worse hair.
In honour of the best talker still in the game, today we take a look at the 5 best promos that Paul Heyman has ever cut.
Honourable Mention: The Time He Called Out A Chris Benoit Fan During An Inside The Ropes Event.
Yeah, this was brilliant. If you haven’t seen it yet, when you finish watching this, go check it out on YouTube.
5. Heyman, Truth, and Lesnar
Okay, we’ll admit it. This was more about Truth than Paul Heyman, but without his participation, we would never have had this glorious moment.
Truth and Heyman had decided backstage that when the former came out, his job was to make The Beast Incarnate break character. Which you would think would be as tough a task as being forced to watch Vince McMahon sing and dance—can we call that dancing?—at the Slammy Awards on a perpetual loop. And even though he didn’t really say much as R-Truth came out to announce that he was going to be in that year’s Royal Rumble match, and was looking forward to throwing the big, big, BIG man over the top rope, Paul Heyman, and everyone, including Lesnar, lost their proverbial minds.
This is down, in no small part, to Heyman’s reaction. From the moment Truth hits the ring, Heyman is resting on the ropes, with his hand on his head as if to say “God, not this idiot again”, and the second that Truth mistakingly claims that Paul Heyman is in the Royal Rumble, Heyman’s reaction is priceless and sells the utter absurdity of the situation so well that Lesnar can’t hold it together.
4. The One Where He Rips Vince a New One
The Invasion angle was…terrible, if we’re to be honest. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that got buried because of extended and lucrative Time Warner contracts, as well as the fact that Vince McMahon had won the war so screw it, let’s bury everyone.
However, in amongst all the crap were a few shining diamonds, and none shone brighter than the night on SmackDown when Paul Heyman ripped Vincent Kennedy McMahon a new one.
What started out as Heyman getting heat for the upcoming PPV descended into character assassination the moment that Vince came down to the ring. And Paul Heyman did not hold back.
As Vinny Mac is making his way out, Heyman is already mocking him with the ‘we are not worthy’ pose, and when Vince steps through the ropes, Heyman just goes full double barrel.
He accuses him of being surrounded by Yes Men, tells him he hates him, berates him for ripping off the Attitude Era from ECW, and on and on it goes. And yes, we know that wrestling is scripted, blah, blah, blah, but there is so much venom in Heyman’s words, so much anger, that at least half of it came from a real place. Either that or someone should give that man a fricking Oscar
3. The One Where He Rips on JBL, Edge and everyone from the WWE who showed up at the ECW One Night Stand PPV.
During the ECW One Night Stand PPV, Paul Heyman is given around 8 minutes to go out to the ring and talk to the ECW faithful in attendance. What follows is a work of art that works on two different levels. An understandably emotional Paul Heyman spends the opening part of this promo in tears—which he laughs off by claiming that his eyes are red not because he’s crying, but because he was in the back, smoking a joint with RVD—before thanking every single ECW fan who ever believed in the little company that could. It is a genuinely heartfelt moment from a man who tried to swim in a pond filled with two bigger sharks in WWE and WCW and nearly made it to shore before they were swallowed up. It’s a real ‘crying manly tears’ moment.
Then he turns his attention to the WWE wrestlers who had shown up to the show, who looked down on the company, and who had decided to get as drunk as they possibly could, and what follows is glorious. He starts by gently reminding Eric Bischoff that it isn’t Paul Heyman at a WCW PPV, but Bischoff himself at an ECW one, bitch, before warning everyone to hide their wives as Edge is at the show (if you know you know) before turning his attention to JBL. There is a lot to love about his character assassination of one of the biggest bullies and assholes to ever grace wrestling, but it’s the line “The only reason you were WWE Champion for a year is because Triple H didn’t want to work Tuesdays” that has gone down in wrestling folklore, and rightly so. It’s just brutal, and even though the WWE contingent at the show tried to laugh it off, it was like watching a bunch of gnats try and take down Godzilla.
2. The One Where He Dares the Network to Throw ECW Off the Air
It’s safe to say that the relationship between ECW and TNN was frosty at best, and downright confrontational at its worst. TNN seemed to act as if wrestling was beneath them, even though they had agreed a deal to air ECW, and that all they were after was some of the cash money that they saw WCW and WWE bringing in. They also weren’t happy with the antics of ECW as a company and their wrestlers as human beings.
On the ECW side of things, Heyman felt as if TNN were trying to bury the company. They did nothing to help promote them, they buried them in late-night TV slots that they kept changing, but the final straw was when they agreed to pay the WWE one hundred million dollars to air their show on the TNN channel.
Paul Heyman was livid when he found out and proceeded to let TNN know in no uncertain terms what he thought of them. He told them he hated them. He dared them to throw ECW off the air, and he promised that ECW would be doing everything in their power to make TNN throw them off the air, before warning them that they better lawyer up as this was far from over. The sight of Paul Heyman’s face so close to the camera might not make for the most pleasant viewing—Brad Pitt he ain’t—but the intensity and anger that he delivers this scathing promo with leaves you in zero doubt that he means every word he saying.
1. His Tribute to New Jack on Talking Smack
This got us right in the feels, as the old saying goes. The news of New Jack’s death hit you in one of two ways. You either weren’t a fan of the man or the wrestler, so didn’t understand how anyone could mourn his passing, or you were a full-on New Jack fanatic and the news hit as hard as it possibly could. That’s just how it was, as that’s just how New Jack was. You either loved him or you hated him. For those of us who loved New Jack, it came as a huge shock to hear that he’d passed. Here was someone who had put his body through so much, both in and out of the ring, that it seemed unfeasible that ANYTHING could ever take him down. New Jack, Keith Richards, and cockroaches were the only things guaranteed to survive the apocalypse. But now that New Jack was gone…
Paul Heyman was given time on that week’s Talking Smack to pay his own tribute to New Jack, and he did so in his own, brilliant way. He couldn’t believe it either; it had to be New Jack pulling a stunt. But when it became obvious that he wasn’t, he realised the truth. It sucked.
For someone who starts this off by saying he avoids giving eulogies, Paul Heyman not only gives the best eulogy we have ever heard, but he does it in such a way that he’s speaking for all of us New Jack fans who struggled to find the words to express our sense of loss at his passing.
