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Paul Heyman is always in rhythm with a microphone in his hand in front of a WWE crowd, even as the beats have had to change for the first time.
Heyman, 59, has been the quintessential heel manager for most of his 38-year career from working with the Dangerous Alliance in WCW to Brock Lesnar to CM Punk and now Roman Reigns in WWE with many more in between.
That changed after Reigns’ 1,316-day world championship reign ended with a loss to Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 40 last April.
It put the former Undisputed WWE champion on a journey from hated heel to top babyface with Heyman as his “Wiseman” doing much of the heavy lifting on screen as Reigns took some time away.
For Heyman, the task was to find a new balance that didn’t violate the integrity of his on-screen character while directed at a different goal in the company’s five-year-long Bloodline saga as Solo Sikoa now tried to ascend to Reigns’ position as Tribal Chief.
“I’ve never looked for sympathy before, but coming out of WrestleMania, I was clearly putting myself in a sympathetic position as Solo’s reign of terror started to become the dominant storyline on SmackDown,” Heyman said in a phone interview.
“I don’t think the presentation of the character is much different. I think the very same things that made the character compelling as a villain make the character interesting to watch in a form in which he will elicit the respect of the crowd to be bestowed upon him.”
There is a change in Heyman’s approach to promos and what he wants to accomplish.
“My rhythm as a villain is to end sentences on a dagger that are not only toward the opponent but stick and twist into the audience,” Heyman said. “The rhythm as a protagonist is to stick and twist the intended opponent or the adversary, but not the audience. To have the audience do the stick and twist with you as your chorus.”
The story’s events led Heyman to one of the most special moments of his career on June 28 when he refused to acknowledge Sikoa as his Tribal Chief and was triple-powerbombed through the announce table at Madison Square Garden, the building where his foray into wrestling began in 1986 as a photographer and Reigns’ Anoa’i family has such a rich history.
To prepare for the moment, Heyman, who looked completely disheveled and aged that night, only got 90 minutes of sleep over the course of a night and a half, stripped the dye from his hair, wore no makeup and even ate food that upset his stomach to change his skin color.
He was able to avoid people in the world outside WWE from worrying about his appearance slowly falling apart after WrestleMania for the betterment of the story.
“Anybody that had seen me in the outside world had already seen me now for a few weeks on unshaven and I’m very lowkey when I go out, I pick my spots,” Heyman said. “I try to be as incognito as possible. So there weren’t a lot of people coming through, ‘Oh, my god, are you OK? Most people didn’t get a chance to see me. The shock value has to be when you see me, ‘My god, what happened to him.’”
Heyman said that level of commitment was needed whether it happened at MSG or not, but the calendar provided the perfect venue for the story to play out. He went over the rhythm of that segment in his head the whole week leading up to SmackDown to get it perfect.
“We weren’t going to change around the story to accommodate Madison Square Garden,” Heyman said. “It just so happened that the stars were all aligned, and doing it at the Garden did indeed add so much to it.”
The planning and storytelling around Reigns and The Bloodline have WWE entering Saturday’s Royal Rumble (6 p.m., Peacock) at Lucas Oil Stadium with various subplots revolving around Reigns, who on Monday was announced as the cover athlete for upcoming WWE 2K25 video game.
Seth Rollins, CM Punk, Sami Zayn, Drew McIntyre and Jey Uso and others all have ties to Reigns and their on-screen experiences with The Bloodline They, along with Reigns, will all be in the men’s Royal Rumble with a world championship match in the main event of WrestleMania on the line.
In addition, the story of Cody Rhodes and Kevin Owens’ ladder match for the Undisputed WWE championship ties back to The Prize Fighter’s hate of the champion teaming with Reigns at Bad Blood.
The idea of creating an extended and cohesive universe revolving around the “Tribal Chief” has been a goal all along. Reigns in WWE’s dramatic episodic series is treated no differently than Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos,” Walter White in “Breaking Bad” and John Dutton in “Yellowstone.”
“The depth of that (main) character has affected everything and everyone within the story,” Heyman said of the TV dramas’ leading characters. “And that’s Roman Reigns. Roman Reigns is the central character around which all WWE stories revolve, and they should be several degrees of separation away from Roman Reigns. But Roman Reigns’ actions affect everyone top to bottom with a trickle-down theory and everyone else’s actions trickle up towards Roman Reigns.”
There may be no more famous supporting character in the story than Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who also sits on the board of directors of WWE’s parent company, TKO. The Rock returned to the ring to tag with Reigns at WrestleMania 40 and last appeared acknowledging Reigns as Tribal Chief on Raw’s Netflix debut on Jan. 6.
How and when The Rock factors into the story going forward is often decided by his availability around his film responsibilities. It’s a delicate balance both sides are adjusting to as WWE is planning where the story goes next without having a Plan A and a Plan Rock.
“There is a leadership by example to be set by someone who’s on the board of directors, much like Dwayne’s responsibilities as just a star of a movie are far different than when he’s one of the executive producers of the movie as well,” Heyman said. “So he’s not just a talent, he’s a member of the board of directors.
“And so, there is a process by which creative has to flow seamlessly here, and he has to be part of that seamless flow. There’s a balancing act, and I think he and everyone involved in potential Rock creative are finding that balance.”
Two of the story’s emerging characters are Sikoa, who went from Reigns’ silent enforcer to challenging his cousin for the right to be Tribal Chief, and Jacob Fatu, who quickly went from Sikoa’s enforcer to now being unleashed as the potential leader of the opposing Bloodline faction.
Heyman said he sees a potential future where both are “WrestleMania main events” either “against each other” or a weekend where “Saturday is main evented by one and Sunday is main evented by the other.”
“The learning curve that both have displayed is intimidating to say the least because we’re at the point where anyone trying to teach Solo or Jacob anything ends up learning from them as much as you try to teach them,” Heyman said.
The quality of story and performances being put forth has Heyman campaigning for himself, Reigns and others in WWE to finally be considered for and win Emmys — awards they have long been shut out from because pro wrestling is a unique form of entertainment that doesn’t fit nicely into any award category.
Heyman challenges some of the great actors of today he admires, from Gary Oldman (“Slow Horses”) to Walton Goggins (Fallout) among others, to give the usually flawless level of performance he and Reigns and other WWE stars put forth weekly on live TV in front of 20,00 people and not “crumble under the pressure” a rowdy crowd can create.
Heyman points to the whole Bloodline’s work in the Trial of Sami Zayn last January as an example.
“I’m not taking away from the greatness of these actors,” Heyman said. “I’m saying if you are going to consider people for an award, doesn’t it need to be also taken into consideration that we are doing something that they can’t do?
“And delivering a performance that drives numbers, like now the No. 1 show on all of Netflix (for Raw’s debut) and at the same time drive multimillion-dollar box-office recipes to see the story play out.”
It brings Heyman back to the fateful day back at the Garden, where the main event was not a wrestling match but a pivotal moment in their weekly story that had been built for weeks on TV, when Sikoa attempted to have him denounce Reigns and accept him as his Tribal Chief.
Heyman hopes the rest of the entertainment world can begin to recognize the much more sophisticated level of long-term weekly storytelling WWE is doing compared to what might have previously been associated with pro wrestling.
“No one left asking for a refund,” Heyman said of that night at MSG. “Everyone left feeling they had witnessed something that A, was historic, and B, had ramifications all the way through this year’s WrestleMania.”
