10 Awesome WWE Promos You Probably Don't Remember
1. The Master At Work
Monday Night RAW, October 21st 2013
There are few men of any era capable of doing as much on the mic as Paul Heyman. In 2001 he delivered impassioned rants as the fearless representative of ECW while simultaneously infuriating the normally placid Jim Ross to breaking point as a mouthy colour commentator.
In the years to come, he excelled as Smackdown’s slimy heel General Manager and then again as WWECW’s on-air authority figure. This is to say nothing of his creative work behind the scenes, of course: we’re purely dealing with his character work on the stick here, and a decade and more ago, virtually no one could touch him.
Incredibly, since returning in 2012 as a purely part-time ‘advocate’ for Brock Lesnar, Heyman’s actually upped his game. Whether delivering aggravatingly smug promos on his client’s behalf, interacting with other characters on RAW or responding snidely to backstage interview questions, there’s no heel manager in wrestling history who’s managed to display this combination of arrogant strutting and servile obsequiousness.
This example is one of the cleverest low-key promos ever delivered on WWF/E programming. Promoting that Sunday’s Hell In A Cell match between himself and Ryback versus his former best friend CM Punk, Heyman appears to go off on one, frothing at the mouth as he screams, spits and generally chews the scenery… but it’s all an act.
Instead, the story he’s telling is that it’s Punk - the aggrieved party hellbent on revenge against Heyman for betraying him - who’s the overly-emotional one, Punk who’s frothing at the mouth for sheer bloody vengeance.
Heyman, by contrast, has ice in his veins, and is in complete control. Heading into Hell In A Cell, late 2013-era Punk’s fiercely individualist lone wolf character was the clear favourite to come out on top… but Heyman had this way of planting a seed of doubt in everyone’s minds.
Was the master manipulator still pulling strings? Would the former Paul E. Dangerously have the last laugh after all? You would, of course, have to tune in on Sunday to find out. It’s next level hype, by a master of the game.