AEW star and former WWE world champion Paul Wight recently spoke with The Tempest about the number of times he has turned heel in his career. Wight jokes that it has happened so often in his career that he has more turns than a NASCAR race.
I’ve had more turns than NASCAR. I remember some of the key ones. Seems like every time we did a brand, I would tear my shirt off, and I’d be on the other brand. That seems like that turned into a rib. RAW to SmackDown or SmackDown to RAW and all that crap. I think one of the better turns was the turn on Cena. That was a good one. Sometimes, I would turn, and I remember being at the gorilla position, and my joke with Vince was, ‘Am I smiling or not?’ ‘Cause I didn’t know. We were working so much. ‘Am I smiling or not?’ He’d be like, ‘Smile! Big smile!’ ‘Okay, I’m a good guy.’ ‘No smile.’ ‘Okay, I’m a bad guy, got it.’
That being said, Wight has always been a fan of playing the heel, and tells The Tempest that being a bad guy kept him in the game much longer.
Sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow and be versatile. It kept me employed for a long time because I was able to be the heel that an upcoming babyface had to beat to move on to the next level. Then when I was a babyface, I was the one that could help an upcoming heel get some heat. For me, it kept me employed and kept me working, kept me in the game.
In a separate interview, Wight spoke about his relationship with Bret Hart and how he wishes he could have wrestled The Hitman during his career. You can read about that here.