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When news broke that WWE had hired Paul Heyman for the role of Executive Director over Monday Night RAW, it created a fair bit of intrigue for wrestling fans. Heyman was not only the evil genius behind ECW, but over saw a period of SmackDown creative that is generally remembered as one of the best of the original brand split era.
It isn’t clear how much creative autonomy Heyman has and it’s far too soon to call this run a ccess or failure. Heyman may well face one of his first tests, though, at SummerSlam.
With Heyman and Eric Bischoff reportedly operating right under Vince McMahon, we could see each of their fingerprints on the biggest show of the summer in less than two weeks. If Heyman does have significant influence, how might it show up in Toronto? This article takes a look at ten different possibilities that could come to fruition at SummerSlam.
#10 A breakout moment for Kevin Owens
At SummerSlam, Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon revisit a feud that many fans that was well played out from 2017 into 2018. Except, with McMahon now playing his arrogant heel persona, and Owens reinvented as a face, the story feels fresh.
Paul Heyman spent years championing Owens as a top face, claiming in multiple shoot interviews that the big money was in KO playing a Dusty Rhodes-esque character who could talk people into the building.
That’s not to say that Heyman is responsible for Owens’ character renaissance. His new direction got underway before Heyman rose to power, besides which Owens has been based on SmackDown, whereas Heyman oversees RAW.
As the lines between the Raw and SmackDown brands increasingly blur, though, Heyman’s fingerprints may well be on a career defining moment—in victory or in defeat—for KO. Owens may well be on a path to surpass Seth Rollins, or even Roman Reigns as the top face in the company.
#9 Becky Lynch vs. Natalya gets time
Heyman has been a vocal supporter of Becky Lynch. While he hasn’t had as much to openly say about Natalya, one can reasonably infer that Heyman likes her, too, if only for her old school roots in the wrestling business and first-class work rate that embodies so many of the top talents Heyman has championed across his career.
The women’s division has been doing just fine in recent years in terms of getting featured on pay per view, but match quality and time allotted has not always been consistent.
One way in which Paul Heyman’s influence over SummerSlam could show up is in this match getting more than its requisite five to ten minute segment, but rather a bell to bell period of time in the fifteen-minute range to properly showcase the athletes at hand.
Moreover, such a match could be used to further solidify Lynch’s standing as one of the very top stars in WWE today.
#8 Splintering from Brock Lesnar
For most of Brock Lesnar’s current run as a part-time WWE Superstar and most monstrous of monster heels, Paul Heyman has served as his mouthpiece and stand-in when he isn’t booked for television.
The pairing has worked well for their natural chemistry and real life friendship, not to mention that Heyman’s talents as a talker are strong enough to feel totally in place representing one of the most imposing physical forces pro wrestling has ever seen.
There’s a school of thought that might suggest Heyman, in creative control, would keep himself close to his friend and one of the top meal tickets in wrestling. However, if Heyman is going to be devoting his attention to the creative process week in and week out, there’s also a fair argument that he might get himself off TV so he can focus his energies appropriately.
#7 A new tag team that doesn’t quite get along
For better or for worse, creative people in wrestling tend to have specific patterns they fall into. There’s Vince McMahon’s tendency to push a Hulk Hogan style super hero in different incarnations like Lex Luger, Diesel, John Cena, and Roman Reigns.
There’s Dusty Rhodes’s infamous Dusty Finish. Eric Bischoff has more than once gone to the well of the heel super group patterned after his most successful iteration with the New World Order.
Amid Paul Heyman’s bag of tricks is the tag team partners who don’t get along, not least of all including Raven and Tommy Dreamer tagging in ECW, and Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit having to work together in WWE.
Done well, this story can give two talents something to do with a nicely focused storyline that both enriches the tag team division, and fuels them to eventually feud with one another. Heyman may well start inching us in this direction once again by SummerSlam.
#6 Alundra Blayze appears
There a number of talents who can claim to have been “Paul Heyman guys” over the years. There are obvious choices liken Brock Lesnar and CM Punk whom Heyman mentored behind the scenes, had a close relationship with, and collaborated with on air.
Then there are talents like Steve Austin whom Heyman had a briefer connection to but nonetheless championed. We also have Superstars like Curtis Axel and Ryback whom Heyman worked with on screen but didn’t seem to have a real kinship with backstage.
For all of these Paul Heyman guys, there is one talent who can make a strong claim to being the original Paul Heyman girl: Alundra Blayze.
As Madusa in WCW, Blayze was a part of Heyman’s Dangerous Alliance faction. While she was under utilized, it’s clear that the affiliation with Heyman afforded her what opportunities she had to get over.
The two have spoken highly of each other over the decades to follow, and one could read Blayze’s featured role on Raw Reunion as related to Heyman’s creative input. We may well see her again at SummerSlam if Heyman gets his way. We could see her confront a certain Lacey Evans given that both have been exchanging blows on social media.
#5 A featured role for Sami Zayn
One of the signature elements of ECW under Paul Heyman’s leadership was making the most of the raw talents available to him.
Heyman famously gave Steve Austin the latitude to cut worked shoot promos against Eric Bischoff. He also offered tailored showcases for limited performers to do what they did best, and only what they did best in front of a live audience.
It’s telling, too, that some of the best talents of the 1990s cut their teeth in ECW en route to WWE or WCW—guys like Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, and Rob Van Dam. These special stars got the opportunity to ply their trade and start building a name, not least of all marking ECW as the platform that got them noticed on their way to bigger stages.
Sami Zayn is exactly the sort of talent who worked his way up through smaller promotions and has adapted to every context who probably would have thrived in ECW had he been around two decades earlier.
Moreover, his hard work and in ring savvy embody the qualities Heyman pushed in the “SmackDown Six” pushed at the top of the blue brand when Heyman was at the helm—a hungry Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Edge, and Chavo Guerrero.
With Heyman in a degree of control again, we may see Zayn get back on course. His expected match with Aleister Black could be the first step in that direction, be it in putting on a classic, or even in achieving an upset victory.
#4 Focusing on in-ring action
While there are a segment of critics who dismiss the original ECW as garbage wrestling on account of the hardcore theatrics that made it “Extreme,” the 1990s brand also had wrestling at its core.
Heyman featured talents with technical ability and in many ways offered the more traditional wrestling product than WWE and WCW for its lack of resources to pull off big pyrotechnics and stunts, or polished production to put too much weight on vignettes that had little to do with wrestling.
Similarly Heyman’s time overseeing SmackDown saw the original iteration of the show as the brand centered on in-ring action, in contrast to RAW’s bigger names and focus on story.
So, while more casual fans might equate Heyman’s creative input to big stunts or bloody violence, in actuality, a purer focus on in ring athleticism and decisive finishes may better embody the man’s actual aesthetic.
#3 Limited screen time for Heyman himself
There are those creative people in wrestling infamous for placing themselves front and center in the on air product to stroke their own egos or because they genuinely believe that they’re best people to their vision of a storyline over.
Heyman has appeared as an on air personality more than once while also directing creative in the past, and so it’s far from unthinkable that he would do so again.
However, at this stage of his career, Heyman is older, already well established, and not known to serving his own vanity over the wellbeing of the product.
Indeed, for as counterintuitive as it might seem, one of the surest signs of his influence over SummerSlam may be that he takes a step back. Perhaps we will only see Heyman on camera then he’s accompanying Brock Lesnar to the ring to do battle with Seth Rollins over the Universal Championship.
#2 A surprise debut or return
One of the staples of ECW was for the lights to turn off, only for them to come back on with a surprising wrestler in the ring. Often it was someone making a return after some time away for injury or working other promotions. Other times, it was a big name from elsewhere in the wrestling world debuting in front of the ECW faithful.
In heading up Monday’s Night RAW’s creative, Paul Heyman has access to more talent and resources to yield a similar effect on the biggest stage possible at SummerSlam.
Maybe it’s a surprise call up from NXT, or maybe it’s someone coming off the injured list, or back to WWE after some time away.
However it might be handled, few creative heads in wrestling have a better track record when it comes to debuting talent than Heyman, and we might see him take advantage of the SummerSlam platform to do just that.
#1 Braun Strowman does monster things
When Paul Heyman was heading up ECW, he invested a good bit in 911 as a monster heel. The big man was well protected, shot to accentuate his strengths, and promoted as a legitimately dangerous commodity.
While 911 was a reasonably talented big man, he was exactly the full blown giant he was marketed as or appeared to be opposite ECW’s smaller talents.
At 6’8” and 300 pounds, as much as anything, 911 brought up questions as to what Heyman could do with a more legit physical monster at his disposal.
We’ve seen Heyman have input on the Big Show’s creative and he has worked closely with Brock Lesnar for years.
Could Heyman and Braun Strowman now be a match made in heaven? After all, Strowman is as legit a giant wrestling has at the moment, but still has a lot of untapped potential as a young talent whose booking has been questionable. Heyman could plan something special for the Monster Among Men at SummerSlam.
