WWE announced in June that it had hired Mr. Paul Heyman, the on-screen advocate for Brock Lesnar and the mastermind behind the long-defunct Extreme Championship Wrestling, to serve as the Executive Director for Monday Night Raw, the longest-running episodic show in television history.
The July 1st Raw episode is said to have had Mr. Heyman’s fingerprints all over it, from Braun Strowman and Bobby Lashley crashing through the LED entrance set, to a color-commentator responding to the carnage by saying “Oh shit.”
But the critically-acclaimed Raw that kicked off July has nothing on the show that closed out this month. A number of outlets and countless fans have said Monday’s Raw was the best put forth in a while. And according to F4W Online, Monday’s episode of Raw, which featured not only solid wrestling matches but also a gory beat-down of Seth Rollins at the hands of Lesnar, was “the heaviest Paul Heyman influenced red-brand episode to date.”
In one month, on Raw, we’ve heard profanity, seen blood, and viewed tremendous matches, all the things that garnered Extreme Championship Wrestling, a South Philadelphia-based wrestling promotion which Heyman led throughout the 90s, a cult following.
So, is Heyman pulling from the ECW playbook? Is he, indeed, taking Monday Night Raw to the Extreme? And if so, what does that mean for the show’s PG rating?
In this episode of Coming to the Ring, lifelong wrestling fans Flood the Drummer and Richard Taylor analyze Paul Heyman’s first month on the job and offer predictions about what August could bring under the Heyman Administration.
Previously published on Anchor FM, republished with permission of the author.
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