On the What’s your story with Steph McMahon podcast, Paul Heyman shared the powerful story of a Make-A-Wish child who changed his perspective on life and taught him the meaning of the word “blessed.”
Stephanie McMahon noted that Heyman has answered “I’m blessed” every time she’s asked how he is since his children were born. Heyman explained why. “I don’t know how anybody can do a Make A Wish visit and go home to healthy children and not understand how truly blessed they are,” Heyman said.
He recalled a specific visit with Brock Lesnar. “It was a young man. He was 11 years old… We went to visit him, and we were told, Hey, he’s going to get tired real fast. These are within the last couple of weeks… And the kid was so upbeat… of course, the parents, you look in their eyes and you just sit there and say, Thank God that’s not me, because the soul has been ripped out of them.”
Heyman described the child’s incredible resolve. “The mother or the father… starts crying. And the kid goes, Hey, we talked about this, no crying… I don’t have that much time, and I’m not going to spend a minute of it miserable. I’m gonna love every single moment I have.”
The child then told them he would be at WrestleMania, which was months away. Heyman recalled being at a WrestleMania press panel and seeing the parents in the back row, assuming they had come in their son’s memory. “And as the press conference is ending, I see the mother walk out, the father walk out, and there’s the kid… blown away… I ran to Brock and go, Brock, the kids here, the kid, he goes, What, the kid from the room? He goes, You got to be kidding. I said, Brock, the kid is here.”
Heyman described the “breathtaking” backstage moment. “The kid comes backstage, and the first thing he says, he goes, bet you didn’t think I was gonna make it… both parents just start weeping openly. And the kid goes like this, hey, we talked about this.”
The child then shared a piece of wisdom with Heyman. “And I said, Why do they need to stop doing it? And he says, You’re only as happy as your saddest child… Now I start crying in the room, right? And I could not stop hugging my kids when I got home… I never understood how blessed I am… my children are healthy, and everything else in life is relative to that. So when people say… ‘I’m a blessed man,’ they go, Oh, that’s a shtick. It’s not my shtick.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit What’s your story with Steph McMahon with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. You can listen to the full podcast on all major podcast platforms.
