Paul Heyman is one of the most innovative and controversial minds in wrestling history. He's currently delivering some of the WWE's best mic work as Brock Lesnar's manager, but he was also the architect of hardcore in the United States. Heyman didn't get put through a flaming table or get tangled in barbed wire, but he was the one behind ECW, which put hardcore on the map. Without the notoriety of ECW, it's doubtful the "Attitude Era" would have been quite as successful as it was during the peak of the industry. Heyman was the booker that gave hardcore a stage and developed the ideology along with it. He provided the substance of characters, angles, and a cutting edge presentation to go along with sizzle of all the weapons featured on an ECW show. If you take into account the entire scope of extreme wrestling, Heyman proved that hardcore could be successful if it had a stage and weapons actually were not a necessity. The 20 minute wrestling clinics that were put on by Lance Storm, Jerry Lynn, Chris Candido, and others were just as extreme as the plunder that littered the ring during a weapons match. The technical wrestling aspect of Heyman's booking is another aspect that added substance and it was just as important as the extreme moments. ECW provided an atmosphere that hardcore gave the fans 100% every match, which defined the style more than any gimmick.
