Is the myth of Paul Heyman dead?

[nickcave]

Has his tenure on Raw put an end to his “creative genius” legacy or do you think he still has it?

[mattyy]

He's not the filter everything goes through.

[TWERKIN' MAGGLE]

It's still Vince's show.

[OVO 40 hunched over like he 80]

He’s still the most honest man in...I can’t keep a straight face f*** him

[ogreknee]

Dec 27, 2019 13:39:14 GMT -5 nickcave said:

Has his tenure on Raw put an end to his “creative genius” legacy or do you think he still has it?

Paul heyman is the originator of the cuck storyline

Sandman/Raven

[repomark]

It is hard to judge as none of us really know how much of the current storylines/creative direction has anything to do with him.

So the answer is no. However - I always rated Paul Heyman the on screen talent and mic worker higher than I did Paul Heyman the booker as was never a big fan of ECW.

[This Player Hating Mothman]

There is no living human being who could be tasked with doing a Vince-helmed television show and turn it around. You could put the best writers in the world into Heyman's position and they would still be stuck doing what Vince wants and making a show that pleases him and the accumulation of his neurotic and deranged ideas. How much Heyman is bringing his own ideas into this versus how much he's making ideas that will endear Vince to him because politics are more important than programming to him, who the f*** knows, but he definitely needs to be held responsible for the stuff he is bringing to the table.

[nisidhe]

It's certainly stuck on both tines of the fork - either he's too willing to follow Vince's vision down the crapper, or he's chiefly responsible for the crap showing up on Raw. Plus, you know, Lesnar.

So, yeah - Heyman's quickly headed into the same category of "never let him near a wrestling promotion again" as Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara. Better stuff is being done without him.

[autisticgeordie]

Dec 27, 2019 13:58:46 GMT -5 OVO 40 hunched over like he 80 said:

He’s still the most honest man in...I can’t keep a straight face f*** him

Not trying to defend Heyman for these RAW's, even if I think that Vince, as the filter that everything goes through, is more responsible considering he's the one with final say on the matter. But, let's be real, Heyman's a wrestling promoter at heart, I don't think there's more than a handful of wrestling promoters who you could describe as honest.

[XIII]

In retrospect a lot of the ECW stuff wasn’t great and even then you had guys like Raven, Dreamer, Bubba Ray, and others with input.

You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain indeed.

[Cyno]

It died for me when it came out that he was supposed to be the mastermind behind Ronda Rousey's godawful worked shoots.

[Deleted]

I was already inclined to say he's vastly overrated when he decided to start cutting the same exact promo every single week for what at this point has been nearly a decade.

[Confused Mark Wahlberg]

He's a carny flim-flam man just like Vince, you'd think they'd get along great.

[Mozenrath]

He's always had some major limitations, like being way too enamored with sexual storylines/humor, yet somehow not quite as trashy as Russo about it. I think his best contributions have often been knowing when to get out of the way and let someone else express themselves, given Raven/Dreamer was as much, if not more, on them than Paul.

[ogreknee]

Dec 27, 2019 17:35:11 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

He's always had some major limitations, like being way too enamored with sexual storylines/humor, yet somehow not quite as trashy as Russo about it. I think his best contributions have often been knowing when to get out of the way and let someone else express themselves, given Raven/Dreamer was as much, if not more, on them than Paul.

Raven vs Dreamer was another cuck storyline

[Andy Martin]

He wasn’t good before. He’s not good now. He’s a snake oil salesman like so many others in wrestling.

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

On the one hand, the Vince factor is strong. I think the last two decades of indy wrestling have aptly demonstrated that competent booking is not actually that hard. The "myth" of Paul Heyman is that only a superb genius can put together a great wrestling show, and it turns out that there are a fair number of creative people out there who can do fine, if not necessarily great. It's really that Vince is outrageously bad, and trying to imitate him (see: TNA pre-Anthem) is a recipe for trash.

On the other hand, he has also been exposed by the times. He had his finger on the pulse of the 90s, and some of his worse angles in the 00s were excused because WWE in general was refusing to move on from that decade - so the only way he stood out was that he was careful not to ruin any viable draws with those angles. When he does similar stories in 2019...well, now we know that this is his style, not a shrew analysis of the current audience or a deference to a company-wide mandate.

So basically: he was arguably overrated to begin with (with the caveat that he inspired many talented people, so perhaps it is more that the non-WWE wrestling world caught up), and we can now separate his flaws from the times.

[Cyno]

Dec 27, 2019 17:12:51 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

I was already inclined to say he's vastly overrated when he decided to start cutting the same exact promo every single week for what at this point has been nearly a decade.

MY CLIENT BROCK LESNAR BLAHBLAHBLAH

[Allie Kitsune]

Dec 27, 2019 18:12:33 GMT -5 Andy Martin said:

He wasn’t good before. He’s not good now. He’s a snake oil salesman like so many others in wrestling.

Paul sold Sleaze in a time when society had an appetite for Sleaze.

But that's not the flavor of the times anymore, and Paul still keeps going back to that well.

[Andy Martin]

Dec 27, 2019 19:22:32 GMT -5 Allie Kitsune said:

Dec 27, 2019 18:12:33 GMT -5 Andy Martin said:

He wasn’t good before. He’s not good now. He’s a snake oil salesman like so many others in wrestling.

Paul sold Sleaze in a time when society had an appetite for Sleaze.

But that's not the flavor of the times anymore, and Paul still keeps going back to that well.

This is a far better way of putting things. Heyman is the same as Russo, Cornette et al who, while being a better promo than the others, is still just the same as he always was for.