During a recent interview with Graham Bensinger, Paul Heyman spent about ten fascinating minutes talking about his former rival and boss, Vince McMahon.
Bensinger, an Emmy-winning journalist, brought up an old Heyman quote about how it would take Sigmund Freud 900 pages to explain how McMahon’s mind works. Heyman said he stands by that, and offered an empathetic psychological explanation for the ruthless businessman and alleged abuser Vince is known as today:
“He had to overcome [dyslexia], had to overcome his
own personality, had to overcome a complicated mother, had to fight for his father’s love — and he didn’t like the universe that he was in, so he created his own universe in which no one could ever hurt him. And his ruthless pursuit of success was at the very same time very psychological and overcompensatory behavior from being a child. And that it was a ruthless pursuit of becoming teflon, of becoming invincible and invulnerable and in a situation where no one could ever hurt him again.”
Asked if McMahon considering himself “good”, Heyman rejected the premise of the question:
“No, I don’t think Vince would consider — 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? And I had some battles with Vince.”
The follow-up to that was about those Heyman/McMahon battles, which Paul said involved a lot of back-and-forth “f**k you”s, because McMahon “liked confrontation”. Bensinger asked the WWE Hall of Famer to describe his worst battle with Vince, and Heyman didn’t hesitate to describe “the most miserable six months” when WWE relaunched ECW as a standalone brand and put its former owner in charge.
Part of the misery seems to have stemmed from Vince’s motives. Heyman again explained his old employer’s motives, which while minor compared to other things McMahon’s been accused of, don’t sound like the actions of someone who would consider himself a “good man”:
“2006 when he relaunched ECW, told me he was putting me in charge of it, and 30 seconds later started tripping me of any authority that I had in controlling or contouring or tailoring or creating the product.
“And again, if you dumb it down to try to explain it to somebody that 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 — wasn’t even a B team. It wasn’t even a C team. It was Pee-Wee 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 the ECW product on Paul Heyman. [impersonates an evil laugh]
“It’s this Machiavellian… 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 just such a personal battle that was terrible for the product, terrible for the company, even worse for the audience. That was that was the most miserable six months.”
He again praised McMahon’s “accomplishments”, but when the conversation moved to modern-day WWE under TKO’s ownership and with Paul “Triple H” Levesque leading creative after McMahon’s ouster, Heyman had more good things to say about the current chief content officer:
“Paul runs the creative and it’s a much different environment with Paul running the creative than Vince because they are distinctly different personalities.
“Vince was a dictator. It was and it was his money. It was his money and therefore it’s his show and you’re going to be the executive director or you’re going to be the lead writer or you’re going to be my top idea man… you better be good at pitching… it’s the constant chase for Vince to buy into your ideas over his own. That’s the dynamic of pitching Vince McMahon. He’s right. He has the right to be wrong. It’s his show… if you can sell Vince, you can sell the talent, you can sell the lieutenants, and you can sell the audience. So if you’re that good of a salesman, he’s going to buy it because then it’s his idea because he gets the credit because he’s the owner.
“That’s not the way it works today. Paul Levesque is not a dictator. He’s a collaborator. See, Vince loves a blank piece of paper. Paul Levesque doesn’t like the blank piece of paper. He accepts the fact that the paper has writing on it already. He’s the best editor I’ve ever worked with in my entire life. Ever. Because he’s an open collaborator that walks in the room with no expectations of his own vision. His vision is to listen to very smart people that have of his own vision. His vision is to listen to very smart people that have pleasure of working with. It’s just a completely different experience.”
Probably helps that Levesque doesn’t put people in charge of things just to meddle with them because he can.
Lots to unpack here. Check out the full clip of Heyman and Bensinger talking Vince McMahon below, and start unpacking with us in the comments.
