If you’ve been following Brock Lesnar through his entire WWE career you’ll know it is rare to see him without Paul Heyman. Sure, Heyman did stab Lesnar in the back inside MSG at Survivor Series 2002 but everybody agrees that was a terrible idea.
Many consider Paul Heyman and the current Universal Champion to be one of the best manager/client pairings in WWE history. But Heyman isn’t a manager, he’s an advocate.
Bruce Prichard recently spent a ton of time talking about Paul Heyman on an episode of Something To Wrestle With. As it turns out this advocacy from Heyman started long before the two even debuted on WWE television.
“Paul was a big advocate of Brock Lesnar then — behind the scenes it was, hell it was a meal ticket number one for him. We knew — we didn’t think that Brock could talk,” Prichard remembers. “We didn’t think that Brock would be able to cut a good promo. We knew what we had as far as the athlete in Brock Lesnar. We knew what we had as far as the beast, we knew what we had when that bell rang, Brock was gonna deliver.”
“[Brock Lesnar] just looks like a badass. But he wasn’t a badass when it came to cutting promos. He needed a mouthpiece. So you take an All-American kid and you put him with a sleazy manager like Paul Heyman — the last person that you think he would connect with. And they mad a great pair.”
“But that — Paul lobbied pretty hard for that. To be the mouth piece of Brock Lesnar and it was an easy lobby cause it made sense. That one was a really easy pitch because everybody was on Team Lesnar saying ‘we need to bring him in, he’s ready to come in.’ But I don’t know if he’s gonna be able to handle it on the promo side and Paul cutting his promos for him worked.”
Therefore Paul Heyman wanted the partnership all along but in the end, it was a matter of convenience. It was one of the best decisions ever made though. It just goes to show you sometimes the most logical choice can be the best one.
If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard with a H/T to Still Real To Us for the transcription
