NightStarX Editorial: The Ballad Of Paul Heyman (a.k.a What the hell happened to you, man?)

"NOTE: This is a collected repost of mine from Facebook. I thought it was interesting enough to place here, maybe."

Paul Heyman was awesome. WAS.



Whatever happened to this guy? I mean what happened to THIS guy, not the smug yuppie left testicle of Brock Lesnar that replaced this guy?

Back in ECW even when Paul Heyman failed at something, he failed with his heart on his sleeve and his balls out. Now when he fails at something he just whimpers and crawls off back to his newspaper column like a kicked puppy, or hides behind something else as an excuse not to try something new, anymore. Heyman used to be willing to die for his vision. Now it'd kill him to get up and do much of anything anymore. :/

So yeah, i DID catch that worked shoot promo nearly a month ago where Stephanie McMahon owned his ass. And she did own his ass. She was right, and I hate to admit it.

Here's what happens when Stephanie McMahon has something to say to him.



Now, I loved Heyman and ECW like nothing else back then. But ever since around 2002 or 2003, sometime around then, Heyman's just done nothing but sit on his ass and do little or nothing innovative, new, or relevant for years except revel in his own juices without that Heyman determination or fire he once had.

It's maybe a worked shoot, but she was absolutely right. Over the years, he's turned into a lazy, complacent slug who gives 'advice' about what everyone else from UFC to WWE "should do" without raising a finger.

So, is Stephanie right? Is Paul Heyman just a professional parasite? I would say, sadly, yes.

I mean after losing ECW, he could have done SOMETHING. He could have turned his attention to something. He said he wanted to compete with UFC. Proceeds to do jack shit. Says what WWE does wrong. Proceeds to do jack shit. Says what TNA sucks at. Proceeds to do jack shit. I can't be the only one who remembers years ago, him talking big about wanting to start his own martial arts promotion. Where was that?

And the thing of it is, unlike most people, we know Heyman COULD try something if he wanted to, he's got the creative mind for it. He's got resources, his name still pulls in at least some interest to get off his ass and start a new promotion or business. But he proceeds to do jack shit but be a self-pitying yuppie attaching his services to the next best thing around him.

That's the thing. Most people critique (like me) and we can't do anything because we aren't in the thick of the industry. We aren't living it. Well, Heyman used to What's stopping him now, aside from just sitting back and being a backseat driver for a living when he's done a lot more than that in the past, and still acts and talks like a big shot that wants to do more, but shys away from the choice to do more.

So it's just complain about the state of wrestling on his newspaper article, which he technically can do, but then gets ON Raw just to be WWE's little errand boy mouthpeice for the guy that's too good to show up at Raw himself more than the bare minimum contracted number of times.

I know i'm probably just taking a worked shoot out of context to connect it to essentially saying that Paul Heyman is more or less a parasitic slug today, but it's just that the "shoot" part of Stephanie's worked shoot about Heyman being complacent and lazy in failure, really comes to the surface for me as a true statement, today.

I mean, I won't take away the ability of the common person to critique the wrestling product, but the fact is, Heyman's not a common person outside of wrestling. He was a major player and easily has the chops to be one again
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But as mentioned, he won't try. It's fine and dandy, and perfectly ok to critique or evaluate when you're on the outside giving an opinion, and true to that, all Heyman's done for years is tell everyone "you're all doing it wrong".

But when someone can EASILY stand up and get in there, and do a better job like Heyman, and WON'T, when there's nothing stopping HIM compared to the typical IWC guy behind a computer who can only give their opinion, because they don't have the name McMahon, Bischoff or Heyman going for them, it's sad to see someone like Heyman willingly reduced to a piss-taking "yes man" for the same people he'll run into the ground and then do any favor for, for a buck, and get right back to talking about how much better he could do and would do, if he was in their shoes, and then purposefully NOT do anything.

He proved in the past he's better than that. He's proved recently, that's all he is, anymore.

Even Eric Bischoff, who I consider to be a complete and utter hack that's let a few runaway successes like the nWo concept get to his head and then proceed to be an overextending, dungbag whose few decent runaway good ideas are buried under mountains of terrible, massively ship sinking comedy of error concepts, like the genius move of handing out creative control cards and obscene contract payments like raffle tickets to unhappy, disenfranchised workers just to make sure they don't run out on his egocentric ass, while pissing away money on Goldberg Monster Cars, and tie-in deals with KISS.

That guy that might not have fired the final shot to fire WCW down the hole but sure as hell stood around while a thousand other leaks sprang up, and is currently repeating history with TNA. That guy is doing better than Paul Heyman is.

Because Eric is still in there, and still trying. In my opinion, it's still a massive failure as he seems to be sinking TNA into the absolute depths of suck with his incredible ineptitude, but all credit to him for as misguided and hacky as I think he is, he's trying.

Like I said about Heyman's ECW days, I at least can have a begrudging modicum of respect for someone who fails on their feet, trying their damndest but just unable to make it up to snuff to stay afloat.

Eric Bishcoff, I think is failing. He's failing in TNA. He's failing on his feet. Heyman is a lazy slug, failing on his back and crying about to everyone while giving advice and doing two-bit favors just so someone remembers who the fuck he even is. Royality checks from the Rollerball movie running thin?

But compared to even Eric Biscoff, whose ineptitude is so great that I refuse to watch TNA while he or Hogan have ANYTHING to do with it... he's trying something.

What the fuck has Heyman done at ALL since 2002 that has ANY real relevancy to wrestling, sports, or the sports/wrestling/competitive fighting scene at all, other than backseat drive from a newspaper, when he used to be known as a guy that was in the trenches, getting his hands dirty, and putting everything he had into a love affair with his own ideas to push them through, everything be damned?

Stephanie was right about him, worked shoot or not.

He's made a living since ECW went down the tubes by attaching himself to anyone he can for a price, and sitting back on his haunches and saying, essentially:

"Well, if I STILL CARED.. I would do this, this, this and this. You could listen to me... hey, maybe if I stand around doing you favors, and slip my advice hints under the door, you can do me the pleasure of making me feel important, yes?

But I don't wanna really supervise, or work, or do anything for you or for myself. But i'll be a character if you need me to, to help my old friend Brock get over, because he's too good to show up for you more than once a month."

Paul Heyman of today, attaches to a host, feeds off of it, drains ego from it, and uses it to benefit his own feeling of superiority by being attached to something like the WWE or UFC and then run off to his blog or his article, or his twitter to merrily pat himself on the back for it.

Professional parasite, indeed.

Hate to say that about a guy I once totally bought into as a great figure in wrestling around 1997, but today he's done shit all except feed on WWE and UFC, without doing a goddamn thing for either company or for himself.

The answer is really that, in the great scheme of things, Paul Heyman never really achieved enough for anyone - especially anyone liable to finance a project - to take him that seriously.

ECW gets an enormous amount of praise from the wrestling community, and rightly so for the creative directions in went in and for the way it then influenced the other much larger organisations to change their style. But you have to remember that from a business point of view, it was pretty horrible. Every time ECW looked to be on the verge of making it in business, Heyman found a way to mess it up. Whether it was annoying networks because they didn't share his creative vision, or annoying PPV companies for the same reason, Heyman never drove ECW toward a really successful business model. They were a cult hit, certainly, but only a cult hit. Even at its best point it was a regional bingo hall business in which the main "stars" worked the telephone order lines for the t-shirts, and the promos were shot in his basement.

So when ECW folded, Heyman's only value was in his ability to generate ideas. As a businessman, he had no value. His company had been small, had gone bankrupt after relying on WWE money to keep it going for the last couple of years, and had now been swallowed by his rivals. The time wasn't right to start his own business then.

And please don't think I am slating Heyman here. He at least had the balls and the skills to create and build the promotion in the first place when he left WCW. So credit to him for that - though some may say people like Todd Gordon had more to do with the business side, whereas Heyman was always the creative guy.

Anyway, as I say, when WCW folded, Paul wasn't in a positiion to launch a company, and from a personal point of view his finances were in the shite, so he probably wouldn't have found the banks too willing. His best move at that point was the one he took - take the WWE's money, get the exposure there, get guaranteed money, and try to make yourself seem valuable again. Unfortunately, Heyman discovered that when you work for a massive company with international responsibilities, you don't have the freedoms you have with a backyard league. WWE wouldn't go for all his ideas. That's what we saw with that God awful ECW December PPV.

I think after that Heyman was disillusioned with the business, but he still hadn't reached a point where he personally had the money or the influence to start anything new. Because he'd also been incredibly honest about the nature of the business and the performers in it, he also didnt have the circle of friends and acquaintences around him to help out on that score.

Now, to compare him to Bischoff. Yes, Eric was in charge for a period where WCW lost millions, and yes he wasted an awful lot of money. But he was also in charge when WCW made MAHOOSIVE gains in profit. He was in charge when it became the largest wrestling company in the world. He was in charge of a division of the Ted Turner empire. He was behind the NWO, the push for wrestling to go live each week. Eric has also been able to convincingly argue that there were any number of reasons not related to him as to why WCW lost money (and he has a point with some of them).

So to potential investers, Eric is a much more proven commodity. He also has some very influencial friends in the business, and in show business more widely. That all helps when it comes to positioning yourself to do other shows (Eric's only successes have come either through connections to Hogan or connections to Jason Hervey).

I'm not sure I'd call Heyman a parasite at all. But for a long period he's not really been relevant anymore. He's been able to make some money out of things he does know about, and he's been able to do things like guide Lesnar's career very successfully. The fact that he talks about what's wrong with the business but doesn't change it himself makes him no different from many other former personalities like James E Cornette for example.

Totally agree. I love Heyman somes of his ideas were fab. But he was never a great business man. He made a lot of people but couldn't then translate that into the big league status he wanted for ECW. Bish, meanwhile, did translate his ideas into the big time. At least for a time. He gave McMahon the sort of kicking that Heyman could only dream of. Sure it all fell apart. But while it worked it really worked.

I think it's also a sign that while people like hardcore stuff it's not the be all and end all of the sport. The WWE changes because the public demands it. TNA has reached a level, it seems, that ECW didn't because they are willing to change and do what the public want. That's the public, not just fanboys. I'm not saying that's all ECW had but it made up their core. As the Manic Street Preachers said sometimes love is not enough!