Paul Heyman Talks Brock Lesnar vs. Bill Goldberg, Their WrestleMania XX Match, More

Paul Heyman spoke with Brian Fritz of SportingNews.com to promote tonight’s WWE Survivor Series pay-per-view. The full interview is at this link and below are a few highlights:

You were openly critical of yourself regarding the promo in Minneapolis from a few week back. (The crowd chanted in favor of the hometown Lesnar despite Heyman’s attempts to get them to back Goldberg.) What would you have done differently?

PH: I would not have accepted the booking for Minneapolis.

Anything else?

PH: I would not have let Brock Lesnar appear in Minneapolis.

That was a tough one to sell, wasn’t it?

PH: I’ll take full blame for it. I’ll tell you why. If I am, as people claim that I am, the best or one of the best or one of the greatest fill in the adjective of all time in terms of someone who can deliver a promo, and if I can go out in Chicago, right before WrestleMania, when CM Punk had just walked out and the 18,000 people in Chicago were hellbent and driven on hijacking that show — I opened the show coming out to Punk’s music, sit down in his pose, never raise my voice, shut them up, lure them in, get them to buy that I’m on their side, double cross them and sell them on Brock Lesnar versus Undertaker and shut down the CM Punk chant all without ever raising my voice — then I’m surely talented enough to go into Minneapolis and manipulate the crowd to say or do anything I want them to say or do.

That’s my job. I am supposed to take an impossible situation and make it look easy. And if I am as good as people say that I am, and I dare suggest I’m better than that, then Minneapolis would have been just another story to add to the story of Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman. Ultimately, I failed in my task and I own up to my failures like a man and I accept them and I move forward. Lesson learned. If I’m faced with a similar situation again, I know what I would do differently but I’m surely not going to reveal it to the public because then they’ll know how I’m going to handle it.

Whenever we see Brock Lesnar wrestle, whether it’s at Survivor Series or WrestleMania, it’s a big match. People are always very curious to see who is opponent will be. What big matches are left for Brock, and what opponents are you most interested in seeing for him?

PH: If our dance card wasn’t filled by Goldberg this year, I thought the match should be Brock Lesnar versus the SmackDown roster in terms of the inter-promotional offering for Survivor Series because that could be a fair fight. And then next year’s Survivor Series, we could do Brock Lesnar versus the Raw roster since, obviously, the Raw roster would be both jealous and envious of the ease at which Brock Lesnar would dispose of the SmackDown roster. So right there, I’ve just given you two years of Survivor Series matches with Brock Lesnar in the main event.

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Heyman also spoke with Yahoo Sports to promote WWE Survivor Series. The full interview is at this link and below are a few highlights:

How has working with Goldberg changed — if any — since 2004?

I didn’t really get a chance to work with Goldberg that much in 2004, though I would suggest now that he has had a chance to be far more up close with both me and Brock Lesnar. He is 12 years more appreciative of the greatness that will be standing before him on Sunday at Survivor Series.

Does taking the spear from Goldberg get any easier the older you get?

No! And he hits harder as he’s gotten older, too. On the record, I’m quite pissed off about it.

At UFC 205, Triple H said Conor McGregor could be a huge superstar in the WWE. Would the locker room embrace McGregor following his comments about the company in August?

Who cares if the locker room would embrace Conor McGregor. If Conor McGregor can be a revenue driver for WWE, if he can sell network subscriptions or if he can sell thousands and tens of thousands of tickets, if he can move millions of T-shirts, who cares if anybody in the locker room likes it or doesn’t like it. They just have to learn how to accept it or draw more money than Conor McGregor so they have the leverage to say, “I don’t want that guy in my locker room.” Until they can drive the revenue a Conor McGregor drives, then perhaps they should get used to the fact that people like that will always get offers to come in and, as the old saying goes, draw money.

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