Paul Heyman: “I don’t think Vince McMahon ever considered himself a good man”
During an appearance on In Depth with Graham Bensinger, Paul Heyman described former WWE owner Vince McMahon as a “supremely complicated human being of great accomplishment.” When Bensinger followed up by asking whether McMahon is a good man, Heyman offered the following response…
“No, I don’t think Vince ever considered himself a good man. I don’t think he cared about it. I don’t think that was part of his self-judgment. I don’t think he felt he was placed on this planet to be a good man.
Do I think he’s a man of great accomplishment? Yes. Do I regret the battles? I had some battles with Vince. He liked confrontation.”
Heyman talked about the worst one they had…
“2006, when he relaunched ECW. He told me he was putting me in charge of it, and 30 seconds later, he started stripping me of any authority I had in controlling, contouring, tailoring, or creating the product.
Again, if you dumb it down to try to explain it to somebody who doesn’t understand, it goes like this: Vince had no one left to compete with. He was the only game in town. Any other game was a minor league. It wasn’t even a B team. It wasn’t even a C team. It was peewee league compared to WWE.
So, he resurrects ECW, which was going down in history, and still goes down in history today, as Paul Heyman’s vision. He puts Paul Heyman in charge. Paul Heyman is now representing ECW, and Vince McMahon can change the ECW creative and product on Paul Heyman.
It’s this Machiavellian thing, and you really feel like that’s what it was. I can look at it in the most objective way today, and I can tell you, in my heart of hearts or in a cold-blooded business assessment, no matter what perspective I take in looking at it, that’s exactly what happened.
He got off changing ECW on me, and it became such a personal battle that it was terrible for the product, terrible for the company, and even worse for the audience.
That was the most miserable six months.”