Paul Heyman did a live show in collaboration with Inside The Ropes and the recently appointed Creative Director of WWE RAW gives the background as to how he became Brock Lesnar‘s true blue advocate. Heyman states that he was originally planned to be Chris Benoit’s manager starting at WrestleMania X8, but him pushing to produce the upstart Lesnar’s matches led to him being in the corner of “The Next Big Thing.” During Heyman’s recounting, an audience member kept yelling “my boy” in reference to when Benoit’s name was mentioned, and Heyman takes a moment to express his opinion on the horrible 2007 tragedy that occurred.
“I was scheduled to come back on the air in 2002 at WrestleMania with Chris Benoit. And that was set. And I went to Vince two weeks before WrestleMania and I said, ‘Hey, I’d like you to let me produce Brock Lesnar’s matches.’ [Vince says] ‘Go ahead. Let’s see what you can do with him.’ And I went to Brock and I said, ‘Okay pick an opponent.’ The first two opponents that he picked for that week were Funaki and Spike Dudley.
And I went back to Vince and said, ‘What do you think?’ And he goes, ‘Goddamn, this guy is money.’ And we did it the next week and we did it on the go-home week. So the night before WrestleMania, we’re sitting in the production meeting, going over the show and we get to the Benoit match and Vince mentions nothing about me and Benoit.”
At this point, Heyman addresses an audience member in the crowd who keeps referring to Benoit as his ‘boy’.
“Who’s saying ‘my boy?’ Why? Why? Yeah you can admire his work all you want, but I’ll give you my take on it since you keep on yelling out ‘my boy’—three people died in that house that night, three. I don’t care about CTE, three people died in that house that night, only one person had the choice behind it. The other two didn’t have a choice to die. So if that’s your boy, fuck you.
As a performer, amongst the five greatest I’ve ever seen in my entire life. As a performer, loved having him in ECW, was going to make him the ECW World Heavyweight Champion, was going to put him in a feud with Eddie Guerrero that would have carried us. The very first PPV was going to be Sabu vs. Taz, Tommy Dreamer vs. Raven, Chris Benoit vs. Eddie Guerrero. If we had gone on PPV in ’96, that would have been our first PPV. So as a talent, remarkable. As a human being, I don’t care about CTE, I don’t care what the reasons are, Nancy and Daniel had no option, he did. Fuck him.”
Heyman finishes his Brock Lesnar story:
“When the meeting’s over I look at him and I said, ‘Hey this thing with Benoit, it’s off?’ And he looks at me, he goes, ‘I think I’m gonna put you with Brock Lesnar. What do you think about that?’ I said to Vince, ‘You know, he’s the next big thing.’ And Vince looks at me and he goes, ‘God dammit, Paul. That nickname would suck!’”
(Transcription credit to Dominic DeAngelo for Wrestlezone.com)
