In a revealing interview with SI Media, Paul Heyman discussed a surprising career path he almost took in 1993, before his pivotal role in ECW. Freshly out of WCW and not yet involved with the Philadelphia-based promotion, Heyman had a unique opportunity in the New York radio scene.
“In ’93 I was out of WCW. I was not yet in ECW, and I was actually on my way to doing New York radio head to head with Howard Stern,” Heyman stated. He elaborated on the unexpected deal, explaining, “What happened was, when I was out of WCW, I signed with the William Morris Agency. There was a desire in New York for someone, anyone, to take on Howard Stern, and there was a deal that was cut with Hot 97 which was a Hip Hop station to put me on head to head in the mornings with Howard Stern. It was my show, however I wanted to build it to go against Stern.”
Heyman acknowledged the seemingly incongruous pairing, saying, “You’d think, wait a minute. You can’t have a Jew boy from New York hosting Hot 97 in the mornings. That doesn’t make any sense in terms of demographics or ethnicity, or demographic breakdown, or genre, and of course, then years later, Peter Rosenberg does it because we all know Peter Rosenberg is like Sam Roberts and all the others out there, they’re all PAUL Heyman wannabes.”
Ultimately, this radio venture was sidelined by a different opportunity. “So I was gonna do Hot 97 head to head with Howard Stern in the mornings Monday to Friday on New York radio, and right before the deal closed, I ended up going into Philadelphia as the booker, the head writer, the whatever, the talent coordinator, the executive producer of this tiny little bingo hall promotion that had a Tuesday night 6PM time slot on Philadelphia Sports Channel called Eastern Championship Wrestling. ECW.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Sports Illustrated with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
