Paul Heyman recently spoke with TV Insider about his time as executive director of WWE Monday Night Raw. Heyman says that, while he doesn’t normally like discussing his position, he did have one thing in particular he enjoyed about it.
When I was executive director of Raw, I refused to talk about being the executive director of Raw because when you’re in that position, you’re privy to [the] inner sanctum of WWE. I’ve always felt there is an expectation and responsibility of confidentiality and secrecy that goes along with that job. I honored it then and continue to honor it to this day…. That being said, on a general basis, my favorite part of the job and the part I’m most proud of was development of talent. I’ve always loved developing talent. It was unofficially at times in WCW [World Championship Wrestling]. Certainly, I’ve built my reputation in doing it in ECW [Extreme Championship Wrestling] and have done it with certain tenures with my run in WWE.
Certainly, with Brock Lesnar, Ronda Rousey and now Roman Reigns…On a specific basis, what I’m most proud of after the fact is that even after my run concluded, the chairman of the board, Vince McMahon, was asked on a quarterly earnings call about Paul Heyman no longer being the executive director on Monday Night Raw. His answer was how happy he was with the creativity I’d brought to the role. Any time someone is replaced in that level of corporate positioning, you will always hear, “We appreciate what he brought to the table, but it was time to do something else. He was great at what he did, but this other move is even better.” Vince offered nothing but how happy he was with my creativity. Even after the fact, for the chairman of the board of a publicly traded company to sing the praises of what I brought to the job is something I am exceedingly proud of.