Jerry Lawler Reveals Paul Heyman’s Impact On WWE Promos

WWE Hall Of Famer and Monday Night Raw commentator Jerry “The King” Lawler was on the Stone Cold’s podcast recently where he would reveal changes within the show since Paul Heyman took over as the Executive Director.

Lawler would explain how Heyman has given a lot of the Superstars on the show an opportunity to be themselves:

“Now that Paul Heyman is sort of in charge of RAW, it’s so much not the characters that are being predetermined by the writers or creative. They’re giving the guys a chance to be themselves just like [Austin was] back when [Austin] became ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. Nobody was telling you, ‘oh, this is how it [has] got to be.’ [Austin was himself] and [he] was given that opportunity and [Austin] took it.”

                                                                    Photo: WWE

Both Lawler and Austin were on the same page as Austin chimed in with his view on scripted promos:

“When you’ve got somebody micromanaging you and telling you every single thing to do, you kind of turn into a robot and you think, ‘am I doing this right? Am I doing this wrong? Am I screwing this up? 

Lawler also shared a story of witnessing Ric Flair go over a scripted promo that he would have to do that was written by a 20 year old kid:

“I remember when I was not doing [RAW] on a regular basis, but I would come back and do WrestleMania, or Royal Rumble, or something like that. And I’ll never forget. I was in the back. And [Austin has] come back and been in the back. And all-of-a-sudden, you’ll get something from the writers, an interview they want you to cut, right? And I’m standing there in the back, and I looked over, and I see Ric Flair reading a promo that some 20 year old kid has written for him. And I thought, ‘oh my God, what on Earth has happened to the business [of professional wrestling]? 

Jerry continued by saying that Heyman is changing that and giving the performers bullet points when doing their promos:

“But do you know what? Lawler asked rhetorically. “I really do think a little bit of that is changing now with Heyman in charge of RAW. Yeah, he’s letting guys – like [Austin] said, giving them some bullet points and letting them go on their own.”

You can listen to the full episode here.

Thank you to WrestlingINC for the transcription.