When Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff were appointed Executive Directors of both Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown in June of last year, the wrestling world rejoiced that WWE’s product would experience a facelift where creative was concerned.
Following the departure of Bischoff shortly after his appointment, things seemed rosy with Heyman in charge of the red brand as he went ahead and refocused on younger talent.
However, due to declining ratings Paul Heyman was removed from his position in June of this year and replaced with Bruce Pritchard. After his departure, Heyman went back to being an on-screen talent with Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns.
Now, for one of the first times since his departure, Paul Heyman sat down on the Ariel Helwani MMA Show to discuss what happened to lead to his exit, his first dismissal from WWE in 2006, Roman Reigns and the praise Vince McMahon heaped on him during this year’s quarterly earnings call.
On his departure as Executive Director of Monday Night Raw, ‘The Advocate’ said:
“We left with a smile, a handshake, and a hug. Absolutely no harsh feelings and actually better feelings about each other because of the way that it ended because it’s ended miserably before.”
When he mentioned that their partnership ended miserably before, Heyman was of course referring to his departure from the company in 2006 which ended acrimoniously.
Even though he was removed from his position, Heyman went on talk about the praise Vince McMahon heaped on him during WWE’s quarterly earnings call:
“Vince’s only comment was ‘I thought he did a great job creatively.’ My run in terms of serving at the pleasure of the chairman was up and then this opportunity presented itself both for me, for Roman and for WWE and we all jumped on it.”
According to Heyman during the rest of the interview, his union with Roman Reigns had been in the works for eight years, before Roman as part of The Shield made his WWE debut at the 2012 Survivor Series.
Paul Heyman may no longer be the Executive Director of Raw, but he still has a huge part to play in the company, overseeing the current creative of Roman Reigns who is in the middle of a family feud with cousin, Jey Uso, over the WWE Universal Championship.