Paul Heyman On Where Brock Lesnar Would Be Without Him, Lesnar Vs. Dean Ambrose Getting Extreme
Paul Heyman recently spoke with FOX Sports to promote WWE's WrestleMania 32. The full interview is at this link. Below are highlights:
Where would Brock Lesnar be in 2016 without Paul Heyman, and vice versa?
"Paul Heyman would have nothing to do with the sports entertainment industry without Brock Lesnar. I came back into it specifically because of Brock Lesnar. Number 1, just in terms of sheer economics, I could tell this was going to be the biggest run of our career together. Number two, just in terms of legacy, I think this run truly cemented our legacy together.
"Where Brock Lesnar would be without Paul Heyman? He would certainly be on top. He would certainly be the number one box office attraction. He would just be doing it without someone who truly understands his persona like I do. Brock likes to tell people 'Paul Heyman talks the talk and Brock Lesnar walks the walk.' You have a trash-talking Jew who is backed up by the single most decorated athlete in WWE history, and it's a formula that works. Also, what I think works about the two of us is that what you see on television is what you get. It's real. It's genuine. It's authentic. We care about each other. We care about each other. We are friends, and I think that transcends the typical relationship in any sport, whether it's UFC, WWE, NBA... it transcends it, because you can tell there's genuine affection between us."
The match with Dean Ambrose on Sunday is going to be No Holds Barred, and over the past couple weeks Ambrose has accepted barbed-wire bats and chainsaws from hardcore legends to use against Lesnar. How extreme do you expect this match to get?
"I expect this match to get as extreme as Brock Lesnar dictates it's going to be. I think Brock's attitude walking into Sunday is 'on the Monday after WrestleMania who will people be talking about?' And I would be remiss if I didn't advocate the position that it's Brock Lesnar's goal every single time he walks out to the ring to deliver the most memorably performance of the night. Now whether that means he beats Dean Ambrose in 10 seconds and stands over the carcass of the ruler of the Asylum, or whether that means Brock Lesnar is going to fight Dean Ambrose for 30 minutes with all sorts of insanity involved – it's up to Brock Lesnar. Brock Lesnar is going to deliver the WrestleMania moment of the year and the match that defines WrestleMania 32. How he does it will be determined by Brock when he gets out into the ring with 100,000 people live in AT&T Stadium, and he feels the temperature of that room and he decides 'this is what I'm going to do to make sure everyone that performed before me was merely the buildup to me, and nobody that follows me will be able to do so.'"
I'm curious about that exact moment before the music hits when you're in the Gorilla position waiting to walk down the ramp. Do you say anything to Brock? Are you nervous at all?
"I don't ever recall being nervous before performing because I've already stepped into the shoes and the clothes of the character. So just by way of example, this week on SmackDown I showed up in Boston sick as hell with a bad case of the flu. And I hope, if you would watch when Brock and I came out for the promo, you couldn't tell that I had the flu, because the character didn't have the flu. By the time we get to Gorilla, I have no nerves at all because Paul Heyman The Advocate is never nervous. In terms of what I say to Brock, there's not really a lot of communication between us in Gorilla because everything that's said we usually talk in private, and by the time we get to Gorilla we can read each other's minds. So if I just look at him, or he looks at me, we know what the other one's thinking already. "
Check out the full interview with Heyman at this link.
Source: FOX Sports