Paul Heyman Details How Vince McMahon Pitted He & Stephanie McMahon Against Each Other In WWE

Paul Heyman has detailed how Vince McMahon pitted he and Stephanie McMahon against each other when he first joined WWE.

When ECW closed down in 2001, it was sold to Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation, with Paul Heyman coming on board as part of the company.

Over the years, Heyman would develop a friendship with Stephanie McMahon, who headed up the writing team at the time of his arrival.

Speaking to Stephanie on What’s Your Story, Heyman detailed the story of how Vince McMahon actively pitted the two against each other.

He said:

“This may end up on the editing floor, but we were pitted against each other. Of course we were. First of all, I just spent 7 and a half years of my own life being God of my own universe, just whatever I decided was it, that was it. I was, from 1993 to 2001, the Vincent Kennedy McMahon of my own company. I was the only word that truly mattered. Every decision went through me, and if I delegated it, that decision had to be approved by me, changed by me, contoured by me, but ultimately it ran through me.

“Now I come aboard and I’m working for other people, and there’s an approval process, where number one, I was the approval process, now I’m one of many pitching. And when you are the final decision maker, when you are the chairwoman of the board, when you are the head of the writing team, when you’re the mother or father of the household, your decision has to be presented with clarity and, as Stephanie would say, not as a question, but as a declarative statement.

“This was a whole new life for me to learn, because every decision I made in ECW was it. When I came aboard, I was told ‘my daughter runs the writing team, take her out of her game. I want you to be the disruptor in the room, the contrarian opinion, do not make that easy, there’s no nepotism here. She earns that right to manage you, or she doesn’t get to do it’.

“At the same time, so I’m walking in to be the disruptor, I’m walking in to be the bull in the china shop, I’m walking in to just say ‘here’s the fuckin’ answers’, and she’s told ‘God dammit Stephanie, you’ve got to manage that Heyman guy! He’s out of control, he thinks this is his company, and it’s not! Rein him in, if you want to be respected, Stephanie Marie McMahon if you want to be people to respect you as an executive, and as a professional, and as a manager of people, you can’t let Heyman take you out of your game. You have to show that you can manage someone like him’.

“Completely pitted against each other. One day in one of those couch sessions at 120 Hamilton; ‘what the fuck is wrong with you? Who told you to make my life so fucking difficult?’ ‘Your father’. ‘Oh, well he tole me to rein you in!’ It was an interesting lesson for both of us.”

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