Paul Heyman Speaks On Leaving WWE, The New ECW, & More

The Sun out of the UK has a good interview up with Paul Heyman. Highlights are below.

On why he left WWE: I think what it boils down to is Vince McMahon and I have totally separate and distinct visions for what a wrestling or sports entertainment product should be. There’s nothing wrong with having those different visions, the problem was that Vince started to take the difference of opinion personally. And once that personality conflict comes into play, when you’re trying to steer the direction of a product, it becomes a bad work environment. So Vince didn’t like working with me anymore and I didn’t like working with Vince anymore. And it’s his company, so obviously he has to stay!

On ECW being brought back: The brand should never have been brought back after the very first One Night Stand in 2005. The follow-up show in 2006 made money, but only because it served as the platform for Rob Van Dam to beat John Cena. Then Sci-Fi Channel was willing to give a test run for the brand ECW and they currently pay a lot of money for that TV show. So the theory of bringing ECW back and making it profitable worked as a business move. But the expectation from the audience that ECW was being brought back only served to be a monumental letdown.

On what went wrong: By comparison, if someone were to resurrect The Beatles and say: “You know what, we want to make them more globally accepted, so we’re going to have a white guy, an Asian female, a Hispanic Bisexual and an African-American with a Scottish accent.” In the land of WWE that actually makes sense. But no matter how you look at it, it’s just not the Beatles. So in the same light, it’s just not ECW. ‘Extreme’ doesn’t mean blood, or tables, or barbed wire. ECW was always about progression, moving forward, giving more bang for the buck. For example, a finish in most every match. Simple thought. A winner and a loser. And a story with it that makes sense. But if you voiced that opinion, Vince would take it personally. If you look at the attempts to recreate the nWo, to re-create Goldberg and, even now, trying to recreate Ric Flair’s career on the line, Vince’s magic only happens when he creates it from the get-go. If Vince doesn’t create it from the get-go, he can’t embrace the formula.

On why Vince didn’t let Heyman run ECW: Because that goes against everything that is Vince McMahon. Vince is such a control freak that if he sneezes, the next 10 minutes of any meeting are ruined because he is so p***ed at himself for not being able to control the sneeze. And it’s worked very well for him in life. He is a billionaire. He has his own luxury private plane and, by the way, it’s a really nice plane. He has things and property and cash that every other wrestling promoter in the world doesn’t have. He has achieved these goals HIS WAY and so Vince is not about to let anyone have free reign over anything in his kingdom. That’s just not going to happen.

The whole interview is very good. Heyman talks more about what went wrong with ECW, Vince’s ego, whether he has spoken to Vince since, and more. The full interview is available here.