Paul Heyman says he was originally booked to return to WWE television as the advocate for Chris Benoit, and that Vince McMahon only switched him to Brock Lesnar the night before WrestleMania X8 in 2002.
Speaking on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet on YouTube, Heyman walked through how the pairing came together. He had spent late 2001 doing color commentary alongside Jim Ross, then went off camera after WWE defeated the Alliance at Survivor Series. The plan was for him to return at WrestleMania X8 to manage Benoit. “I was coming back on camera, WrestleMania 18 to manage, I hate that word, Chris Benoit, and that was where we were headed,” he said.
Lesnar, meanwhile, was pushing for a call-up. Heyman said Lesnar grew impatient in developmental and forced the issue. “Brock was very impatient in OVW and moved back to Minneapolis and told WWE, put me on the main roster,” Heyman said. WWE began using Lesnar in dark matches, where Heyman said the veteran producers had a generic plan for him. “All these old timers are there, Jack Lanza, Tony Garea, the previous regime of producers, and it’s the same thing. Just stand in the middle of the ring, kid, you’ll be fine. Let everybody bounce off of you. Don’t move too much. He should be a Russian,” he said.
Heyman said he saw something else. He pointed to Lesnar’s amateur background, his athleticism and his name. “He’s an NCAA Division One heavyweight champion. Look at his combine numbers, look at what he can do, look at his leaping ability, look at the way that he moves,” Heyman said. “Have you ever seen anyone move like that, let alone someone of that size move like that? And listen to his name, you couldn’t think of a better name for a fighter, Brock Lesnar.”
The push to get Heyman involved came from Taz, who had worked with Heyman in ECW. “Taz brought him over to me, because Taz was such a huge fan of Brock’s amateur career,” Heyman said. “Taz said, ‘Hey, brother, they’re gonna screw this up, you got to get involved in this over here.'”
Heyman then took it to McMahon. “So I went to Vince and I said, ‘Hey, we have a heavy investment in Brock Lesnar, we’re gonna screw this up,'” he said. McMahon told him to take over and produce Lesnar’s matches. Heyman said he built them around a simple template. “We just went by the theory of simple, spotlighted, singular. We just kept his matches to that,” he said. “It would resonate, it would translate to the audience, and in that we found a chemistry with each other that was undeniable.”
McMahon saw that chemistry, and the night before WrestleMania X8 he made the call. “The night before WrestleMania 18, Vince pulled me aside, and he said, ‘This whole thing with Benoit was called off. I’m putting you with Brock Lesnar,'” Heyman said. “Okay, happy to be of service, because I knew this is a once ever opportunity, and that’s a once ever athlete, and this will be a once ever act.” Lesnar made his main-roster debut on Raw the next night, with Heyman returning to television to introduce him.
Heyman also reflected on what the partnership has meant for both men. He said Lesnar would have succeeded either way, but framed the pairing as career-defining for himself. “Brock Lesnar would still be massively successful. I wonder what Paul Heyman’s career would look like without Brock Lesnar,” he said. “We are a very unique pairing, and we work well together behind the scenes, and that transpires on camera. There’s a camaraderie, there’s a trust between us, there’s a pursuit of greatness amongst us that permeates the screen.”
He closed with his assessment of Lesnar as a performer. “Brock Lesnar is the modern day Jim Thorpe. He’s the greatest athlete on the face of the planet,” Heyman said. “There’s no one like Brock Lesnar, and he is the most underappreciated, underrated in-ring worker I have ever seen in my life.”
The full interview is available on Chris Van Vliet’s YouTube channel.
