Paul Heyman told Vince McMahon that Roman Reigns could not be the big dog, and that he himself could not be an advocate, because both of those things already belonged to Brock Lesnar.
Heyman explained the conversation on Six Feet Under with The Undertaker. The pairing came together in 2020, after Lesnar’s contract expired as the pandemic shut everything down, and McMahon decided to pause rather than put him on television in an empty building.
“The decision was made for us to work together finally. And when I asked Vince his vision for it, he just said, ‘ He’s the big dog, and you’re his advocate.”
Heyman disagreed on both counts.
“The first thing I said was, he can’t be the big dog anymore. We’ve run with the big dog since 2012. He needs to evolve into something completely different. And I can’t be his advocate. I was Brock Lesnar’s advocate. I must be something different to this character.”
The example he used to sell it was the man now sitting opposite him.
“The examples that I continuously gave were the Dead Man, the American Badass. It has to be that shocking of a metamorphosis, and it has to make sense.”
“The Dead Man grew into the American Badass because times had changed around him. The nineties had evolved, and the audience wanted more out of the Dead Man, to the point where the Dead Man returned as the American Badass. And even though that’s a seismic shift in character, you never alienated the Dead Man. You incorporated him into an evolved character.”
“It’s a progression. It’s a metamorphosis. It’s here’s what I have on my resume, and here’s where I’ve been, and now here’s where I’d like to take you next, and I need to wear a different suit. I need to wear different colors. I need to have a different scheme of things, because that worked with Brock, but what worked with Brock did not work with Roman.”
He said the same applied to everyone else he has worked with.
“And what worked with Roman did not work with CM Punk, and what worked with CM Punk did not work with you, or with Steve, or with Rob Van Dam, or anybody else that I’ve worked with. Everyone’s an individual, and we need to create and act like a marriage, like a professional marriage.”
He described his own role as a supporting one.
“If I understand my role right, I’m the supporting player, and I take great pride in that. A great supporting player makes the main character, and makes the main character in such a degree that the main character could not pull that off on their own, male or female.”
He compared it to a film role.
“Robert Duvall in the Godfather movies. The greatest supporting actor I’ve ever seen. Look at the cast. Brando, De Niro, Pacino, and yet Robert Duvall was the glue, and made everyone else around him look better. That’s the role.”
He also described the job in practical terms.
“If I can take something off your plate the day of a show, and back then we were doing five, six, seven shows a week, if I can take something off your plate so you can achieve that, look at the ride I’m on with you.”
“If it’s with the right person, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, CM Punk, you, Steve Austin, if it’s with the right Rick Rude, there’s no telling the greatness that can be achieved.”
“People can come at you in your life from multiple directions and say anything that they want about you. They can nitpick you to death. You know what they can’t take away? The body of work that you put together that screams out greatness. They can’t take that away from you. That’s yours. You own that. You earned that.”
Heyman is currently on screen as the Wise Man of the Vision. The Tribal Chief run he negotiated with McMahon lasted 1,316 days, the longest world title reign in WWE in almost forty years. Reigns is the reigning World Heavyweight Champion and defends the title in Mexico City on September 14.
