Backstage Update On Paul Heyman's Approach To Booking WWE Raw

Brand supremacy was the order of the day for Paul E.

by Andrew Pollard
Paul Heyman
WWE

With Paul Heyman having recently been relieved of his duties as the Raw brand’s creative powerhouse, now comes an update from Fightful Select on Heyman’s tenure as Raw Executive Director.

A new report claims that Heyman was extremely serious about treating Raw and SmackDown as warring brands. As such, his mantra for Raw was to make the red band far superior to its Friday night counterpart.

Heyman was also said to be keen to shine a spotlight on emerging or underutilised talents such as Angel Garza, Apollo Crews, and Austin Theory – and the former ECW head honcho even campaigned to bring Buddy Murphy to Raw.

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By all accounts, Heyman’s approach was largely driven by creating the stars of tomorrow and highlighting new names at the top of the card. Still, WWE opted to remove Heyman from his Executive Director role in June, instead opting to have Bruce Prichard oversee the Raw brand in addition to handling SmackDown.

Since Heyman’s departure, Raw has manged to hit all-time lows where it pertains to viewership. Whether Paul E. would’ve made any significant difference to these ratings, who knows. Either way, Heyman is now solely contracted to WWE as an on-screen talent.

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Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.