Paul Heyman sats down with Chris Van Vliet in Stamford, Connecticut to discuss how he brings out the best in the wrestlers he advocates for, being aligned with top stars such as Brock Lesnar, CM Punk and Roman Reigns, how he became Roman Reigns’ Wise Man, why Curtis Axel and Cesaro didn’t work as “Paul Heyman Guys”, being in the ring with Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 when Lesnar appeared to have retired, what he does behind the scenes in WWE, why he left WWE in 2006, rumors about Vince McMahon funding ECW, how close he came to joining TNA, and more!

What a beautiful moment you and Brock Lesnar shared at WrestleMania 42. Can you take me into the ring? What was the conversation that you guys shared during that long embrace?

“I thanked him for everything. He thanked me for everything. I told him that I love him. He told me that he loves me. Then I asked him if he finds it funny that the two of us are standing in the middle of the ring, in the middle of the stadium, in the middle of WrestleMania, being broadcast all over ESPN, telling each other that we love each other. I said, ‘This is kind of a surreal moment.’ He goes, ‘F*ck them! Don’t worry about that, this is just for us.’ Okay, my beast. Happy to participate in the moment. It was just a very personal moment that we were not hesitant to share with the rest of the world. It was a very emotional moment.”

So what do we make of that moment? What should we make of that moment at WrestleMania 42?

“Remember how I felt if I’m an audience member. I would remember how I felt watching it. I’d remember what that moment was. I remember all that it encompassed, and I would be appreciative of the fact that I got to live that moment and experience it and hold it in my data bank as a fan.”

You’ve managed so many champions, so many Paul Heyman guys have gone on to be champions. I don’t know if you’ve talked about this before. What was the original plan with Curtis Axel? Why didn’t that one work out?

“Because I don’t think it was meant to work out. I don’t think there was ever an overall grand scheme to move Curtis Axel all the way up the ladder. Curtis Axel filled the need for there to be people around me to feed to CM Punk at the time, it’s the same thing that happened with Cesaro. You look at Cesaro, and he checked, especially at that moment in time, he checked every box to become a top star. Everyone who got into the ring with him came back into Gorilla, saying, ‘Give me him.’ Everyone. I remember John Cena worked with him on television and came back and looked at Vince and said, ‘I could main event WrestleMania with him.’ And probably could have, and should have. Cesaro was placed in that position the day after Brock Lesnar conquered The Streak, so that when Brock took his hiatus, I had an excuse to be on television to say my client Brock Lesnar conquered The Undertaker’s undefeated streak at WrestleMania, and you needed an excuse to have me out there on television, and if you put me on commentary, I can’t say it for two or three hours. I have to say it with impact once a week, just drill that into your head, reinforcement, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. So Cesaro became the excuse to see me say the line. Curtis Axel was cast as generic Paul Heyman guy. You may as well have put a mask on him and call him the Mad Russian, Mr. X, The Assassin, the Punk Destroyer, so that we could feed the babyface CM Punk, and that’s a shame for Curtis Axel, because he had a lot more to offer, but he delivered in those matches with Punk, and that was the assignment, and once that assignment was over, there was no plan to propel him further, and he didn’t have the cache to go in and pitch for something that would continue the momentum coming out of that program.”

So there wasn’t a long-term plan for either of those guys?

“I don’t believe so. If there was, I was never clued in on it. When I was told I was getting Curtis Axel, my question was, what are we doing with this? And Vince’s answer was, ‘Going all the way to the top.’ I don’t think Vince really felt that about him, and I don’t think, I mean, I could tell by the third week I was with Cesaro, oh, I understand what we’re doing here, I get it. I see how this is going to play out, that as soon as Brock is back, this is going to get discarded.”

There’s a certain way you look at Roman Reigns. What’s the thinking behind that?

“Uninhibited, uncontroverted, absolute devotion under any and all circumstances. If the room is on fire, and he says we’re going to run through the flames to get to the other side. ‘Yes, my Tribal Chief, I will go with you, my Tribal Chief. For I believe in you to such an extent that if you say we’re going to run through the fire and go to the other side, I have absolutely no reason to doubt the fact that we’re going through on to the other side, my Tribal Chief, and I will light myself on fire for you, my Tribal Chief, to protect you from the flames, for you are my Tribal Chief, and I acknowledge you. My world is built around that acknowledgement.’ It’s just devout worship, it’s blind devotion. It’s also the way, to be blunt, I used to see some people in a room when Vince would talk. It was just amazing to me that if you’re in the room and you’re not there to give a contrarian opinion, I don’t know what you’re in the room for. Because then you just inevitably become a yes man, so there were too many people, too many times that anything that Vince would say, it was never offering an opinion of, ‘Hey, that sounds great, and what if we did it this way too?’ Where’s your own input into it? In watching that, and in seeing other people, you know, just in Hollywood, do it too. Just, ‘Oh, that was so magnificent! Academy Award! Yes, yes! Oh, that was wonderful!’ It’s like, really?”

It’s so easy now to look back and go, of course, this character would work. We have the benefit of hindsight. It’s been six years, of course, it works, but was there anyone at that time that didn’t think it would work?

“Well, you know, it’s just the little things that go into it. The first time I came up with Tribal Chief, [Vince said] ‘Really? You want to call him the Tribal Chief?'”

What did Vince want to call him?

“Oh, The Big Dog, Roman Reigns, with his advocate, Paul Heyman. I said, ‘Well, I can’t be his advocate as Brock Lesnar’s advocate. We have to have something different to Roman Reigns, and Roman Reigns has to be different. You got to pull the trigger on this. This has to be as much of a seismic shift as The Deadman becoming The American Badass. This is a whole new character. This is a whole new persona, and he could not have played this persona earlier, because he was too young to do it. He needed to weather the storms to become the Tribal Chief. We grew up with him, almost like he was a child star, in that we saw him from his young days, fresh out of college, and he grew into this Tribal Chief.”

You had an exceptional tan on TV for a few weeks. What’s the story behind this deep tan?

“I was competing with Bron Breakker as to who could look more ridiculous with the self-tanner that we were applying. Actually the time that I did that, I needed it because I looked god-awful at the time. Here’s something I’ve never revealed publicly, and it just goes back to how you approach this industry or performing in and of itself. I know the exact episode that you’re talking about, because it’s a meme now, where I crashed out when I was talking to Jey Uso, because Jey Uso said I screwed over the Tribal Chief, and it’s like, ‘No, it’s always my fault, it’s always me, me, me, but not this time, I’m not the one, I’m not the betrayer, I’m not the double crosser…’

That crash out was very real to me, because at the time, I always get sick right after WrestleMania, because I wear myself so down going into WrestleMania, so I always get sick. I always end up with a sinus infection, or bronchitis, or something, inner ear infection. Something goes wrong with me the week or two after WrestleMania, every single year. At that particular moment I got a kidney stone, or several kidney stones, and in passing the kidney stone it was so sharp it cut my urinary tract, and besides cutting my urinary tract, it left my urinary tract in a position to where I could catch an infection, and man, the last place you want an infection like that is in the urinary tract, because it’s tough to get rid of. So now the urinary tract inflames, presses up against the prostate, irritates the prostate, the infection now starts to spread, and now the infection is in the urinary tract and in the prostate, and it’s spreading through my system. I end up in the hospital. Shout out to White Plains Hospital, because, wow, they took wonderful care of me. I end up in the hospital, and all I’m asking is, I have to be out of here by Sunday night, because I have to be on the jet on Monday to go to Raw. They’re looking at me saying, ‘You have a very serious infection.’ I mean, they’re bringing in people from infectious diseases, because I’m allergic to penicillin, number one, and number two, any antibiotics that they’re giving me, none of them are working.

Infection is getting worse. My temperature is rising, and the effects of the infection are taking hold, but I won’t miss work. So I checked myself out that Monday morning. I chartered a jet on my own to Raw, did Raw, flew on the WWE jet back to White Plains, checked myself back into the hospital, didn’t tell anybody. Meanwhile, when I did that scene, and for a couple of weeks afterwards, when I would jet myself to Raw, take the jet back home, check myself back into the hospital, when I did that scene, I had a catheter and a PIC line. Next to trying to book the rebirth of ECW in 2006, perhaps the most miserable experience of my life. But there was work to be done, and I wasn’t going to miss work, especially because we had just launched The Vision, and to miss television, then would be abdicating my responsibility to that story.”