Paul Heyman says WWE’s handling of Cesaro was “a crime” and “a major fumble,” and that there was never a long-term plan for either Cesaro or Curtis Axel during their runs as “Paul Heyman guys.”
Speaking on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet on YouTube, Heyman was asked what went wrong with Curtis Axel, who he managed in 2013. He said the role was never built to lead anywhere. “I don’t think there was ever an overall grand scheme to move Curtis Axel all the way up the ladder. Curtis Axel filled the need for there to be people around me to feed to CM Punk at the time,” Heyman said. “It’s the same thing that happened with Cesaro.”
Heyman said Axel was interchangeable by design, a foil to get the babyface CM Punk over. “Curtis Axel was cast as a Paul Heyman guy, a generic Paul Heyman guy. You may as well have put a mask on him and call him the Mad Russian, Mr. X, the assassin, the punk destroyer, so that we could feed the babyface CM Punk,” he said. “And that’s a shame for Curtis Axel, because he had a lot more to offer.”
He had more to say about Cesaro, who he said had everything needed to reach the top. “He checked, especially at that moment in time, he checked every box to become a top star. Everyone who got into the ring with him came back into Gorilla, saying, ‘Give me him,'” Heyman said. He recalled one example. “I remember John Cena worked with him on television and came back and looked at Vince and said, ‘I could main event WrestleMania with him.’ And probably could have, and should have.”
The pairing came together for a practical reason. Cesaro aligned with Heyman the night after Brock Lesnar ended the Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak in April 2014, which gave Heyman a reason to stay on television while Lesnar took time off. “Cesaro was placed in that position the day after Brock Lesnar conquered the streak, so that when Brock took his hiatus, I had an excuse to be on television to say my client Brock Lesnar conquered the Undertaker’s undefeated streak at WrestleMania,” Heyman said. He said he realized quickly that the act had a short shelf life. “I could tell by the third week I was with Cesaro, I understand what we’re doing here. As soon as Brock is back, this is going to get discarded,” he said.
Heyman pointed to Cesaro’s languages as a missed creative angle. Cesaro is fluent in several, and Heyman compared the untapped potential to a scene from “Inglourious Basterds.” “If Cesaro was given the opportunity to answer every question in a different language, you’d have seen a side of his personality, because he will put emphasis in the dialect, and you will see his mannerisms match the dialect that he’s presenting,” Heyman said. “So I think Cesaro could have been a fascinating promo if he was given the chance to do that in WWE. He wasn’t.”
That, he said, was the company’s failure. “That’s our fault. That is a major fumble. That was a crime that was committed against the career of Cesaro, and a crime that was committed against the audience for not allowing this gifted performer to do what, at the time, certainly he could do better than most anybody else on the face of the planet,” Heyman said.
He also described the program he believes was never made, a turn that would have set Cesaro against Lesnar. “When you realize what he’s capable of, what an opponent he could have been for Brock Lesnar. Had I turned on Cesaro and we built him up to be a threat to Brock, the matches the two of them could have had are mind-boggling,” Heyman said. “A tremendously wasted opportunity, and no one for us to blame but ourselves, including me.” Cesaro left WWE in 2022 and now wrestles as Claudio Castagnoli in AEW.
The full interview is available on Chris Van Vliet’s YouTube channel.
