It’s no secret that a majority of current WWE wrestlers have their promos written out for them by WWE’s team of writers, and the benefits and disadvantages of scripted promos have been debated by fans and wrestlers alike for years. Paul Heyman is a member of the exclusive group that free to deliver his promos without a script, but in a new interview on the Sports Media Podcast with Richard Deitsch this week he went in great detail defending scripted promos and why WWE utilizes them.
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“That’s, again, something without a perfect answer,” Heyman began. “Vince McMahon owns a content creation conglomerate that now has on the table in application three separate billion-dollar deals. And I’m sure he’s working on more. Knowing Vince he’s probably trying to envision the first trillion-dollar content output deal. … When you have such deals you have to protect those deals from someone else screwing them up. So if Mr. or Mrs. or Miss X goes out to the ring and on live television or a live stream says something that is egregiously wrong and it gets through or it’s said in front of all these witnesses and it causes a major scandal and, ‘Cancel Culture’ or not, deservedly gets WWE thrown off of FOX or NBCU or Peacock and blows a billion-dollar deal, who’s to blame besides Vince McMahon for not saying, ‘I want to know what this person is going to say before they say it.’”
Heyman then pointed out how shows like Peaky Blinders and Better Call Saul are shows are scripted and taped in advance, and that because WWE is live it doesn’t want to be left “open for someone screwing multi-generation lifetimes of work to get where we are.”
He was then asked if there’s a happy medium between wrestlers being scripted and not being creatively stifled.
“It’s a constantly evolving process that has to be evaluated by the individual and the circumstances on a moment-to-moment basis,” Heyman said. “I am sure that in his heart Vince McMahon… has concerns about the manner in which Paul Heyman would present sports entertainment in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and moving forward. I look at this differently than they do. But I don’t think any of those people would have a problem if something went wrong at WreslteMania and you needed to buy 15 minutes of time for the live crowd and had no idea what to do [and said], ‘Okay, give me a live mic and put it in Paul Heyman’s hands. Paul, go out there, buy me 15 minutes.’”
Heyman will appear at WrestleMania 37 alongside WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns this coming Sunday.
Do you agree with Heyman’s argument? Let us know in the comments below!
