Paul Heyman recently appeared on “After the Bell with Corey Graves” to hype this weekend’s WWE Crown Jewel event.
During the discussion, Heyman stated that he had previously pitched Logan Paul to join WWE:
“When I was executive director of RAW, I had pitched Logan Paul to Vince McMahon to get involved in a scenario that would ultimately culminate in a SummerSlam or Survivor Series or a Royal Rumble match. So I had seen the Paul brothers disrupting the boxing industry from the very beginning when they got involved. I mean, they just came in at such a level and with so much fanfare. This is a no brainer to the tribal chief, and it’s a no brainer to his special counsel. This is global publicity. This is a chance to take Logan Paul’s audience and put those eyeballs on WWE, and more importantly, on Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman and the Bloodline. Of course, the desire is to retain as many eyeballs as possible because we’re trying to seduce them with our brand of entertainment.”
Heyman’s thoughts on the WWE regime change:
“Well, it’s different than the last transition because the last transition was going to be the end of the New York territory and the beginning of a national and then global expansion because anybody that had seen the rise of Vincent Kennedy McMahon knew that his vision and his goals and his ambitions could not be contained with just the Northeast territory. He saw the expansion of cable and he realized it’s a national game now and with the eye on once it becomes national, it’s gonna go international. So it was also the end of professional wrestling in the Northeast and the implementation of sports entertainment. The entire concept of bigger, better, brighter, Madison Avenue friendly, licensed out action figures, and T shirts, and memorabilia, etc, etc, the big vision for what was a very enormous contained niche industry.”
“Now we’re seeing a regime change of a five and a half billion dollar publicly traded global conglomerate. It’s a far different type of progression into the future because the inheritance of the product comes along with the fact that the product is already established with billion dollar license fees and therefore there is an expectation of what the product is. There’s not going to be that drastic of a change in the entire concept of what we’re promoting, to go from Worldwide Wrestling Federation, which then became World Wrestling Federation, to the concept that is now World Wrestling Entertainment. That was the last transition. This transition is, what do we do with this World Wrestling Entertainment with its billion dollar license fees and how do we progress it into today’s culture, to dominate today’s culture, to compete with the NFL and the NBA and the NHL and Major League Baseball and overseas futbol and soccer and cricket, etc, etc, let alone every other form of entertainment that’s out there.”
What he would like to see more of in the future:
“It’s the same answer I would have given 35 years ago, the same answer I gave in 1993 going into Philadelphia, the same answer I gave in 2001 coming aboard WWE, the same answer I gave Vince McMahon as executive director of RAW. New superstars, new talents, new personas, new characters, to mix in with those that we care about.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
(h/t to Wrestling News for the transcription)
