Legendary wrestling manager Paul Heyman appeared at a live event for Inside the Ropes where the advocate for Brock Lesnar talked about a 2014 edition of Monday Night Raw, when the WWE traveled to Chicago on the road to WrestleMania 30 shortly after the departure of hometown hero, CM Punk. To avoid a full on show hijacking from the passionate fans of Punk, Heyman revealed a conversation he had with Vince McMahon in order to utilize the crowd, and promote WrestleMania.
I knew I had an opportunity to do something that no one else could do. I’ll tell you how that happened: Vince McMahon did not know about the fact that it was a move to quote-on-quote hijack Monday Night RAW, and the entire show was laid out including a Brock Lesnar/Paul Heyman promo… and about 90 minutes before the show went on the air, I went to Vince and I said, ‘Are you aware of what we’re facing here just weeks before WrestleMania?’ And I showed him, on my phone, just a sampling of what we were about to face on that show. That it was the determination of a very passionate fan base in a very passionate city to take over that show and heckle the show for three full hours chanting the name CM Punk. Now, Punk and I have seen this industry in very similar ways for a long time. The industry moves forward without you. The industry moved forward without Bruno Sammartino, the industry moved forward without Bob Backlund, the industry moved forward without Hulk Hogan, the industry moved forward without Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, the industry, hey, in the past year, John Cena who has pulled this wagon — has been the man in WWE for 15 years, John Cena made fewer appearances than he ever has on any given year that he’s had since 2002. Company moves on. Company is gonna move on without Brock Lesnar, company is gonna move on without Paul Heyman, company is gonna move on without Roman Reigns and guess what? The company is gonna move on one day without Vince McMahon. It just is, and if it doesn’t move forward then what have we built? We’ve built something that means nothing because if it revolves around one person being involved, we’re screwed. It can’t revolve around one person, so Punk was gone, and the audience was gonna hijack the show.
Heyman would continue, explaining how he would mess with the audience to rile them up.
I said, ‘Hey, our objective is to promote Brock Lesnar versus The Undertaker. Well last year, CM Punk lost to The Undertaker and that was the beginning of the downward spiral of CM Punk and Paul Heyman because it all fell apart after that and I’m gonna blame it all on the fans because they took Punk away from me and you know who else I blame besides the fans, I blame The Undertaker and I’m gonna teach The Undertaker a lesson. How? Since he let the fans take Punk away from me, being the asshole that I am, I’m gonna take the streak away from him and how do I take the streak away from him? Brock Lesnar.’ So how do I set it up? So, I said, ‘Let me f*ck with them. I just wanna go out there and f*ck with them. I’m gonna talk to them. I’m gonna lure them in. I’m gonna turn completely babyface. Just give me 15 minutes. Let me go out there, reel them in and take it away from them and believe me, they’ll stop trolling. They won’t hijack this show because they’ll get all their CM Punk chants out and then they’ll pay attention to the WrestleMania matches that we’re promoting.’ I considered it a challenge.
Check out the full interview below. (H/T Fightful)
