Paul Heyman recently revealed why he turned down an offer to join TNA Wrestling in 2010 after leaving WWE. Speaking on Inside The Ropes, Heyman explained that while TNA had been trying to contact him since his WWE departure, he initially wasn’t interested in returning to the wrestling industry. However, after encouragement from Bubba Ray Dudley, Taz, and Tommy Dreamer, he decided to hear TNA out.
“I was long gone from WWE when I started talking to TNA. They had been trying to reach me from the time I left WWE, and I really had no interest in being back in the industry. Finally, after so many phone calls, so many emails, and so many DMs on Twitter, Bubba Ray Dudley, Taz, and Tommy Dreamer came to me and said, ‘Just talk to them. Hear what they have to say.’”
Heyman envisioned running TNA with a focus on younger talent, taking inspiration from Dana White’s leadership of UFC.
His plan was to phase out older legends and build the promotion around rising stars, including Daniel Bryan.
“My concept with TNA was the Dana White concept with UFC: give me the ball and let me run with it. If I fail, I fail, and if I don’t, I don’t. But you’re going to have to let me take a stab at this—not like New Jack stabs white people, but let me take a try at this. WWE had all these legends, all these Hall of Famers; they had an established product, they had a certain way. I was going to take TNA in a completely different direction, and unfortunately for a lot of friends of mine, that direction meant getting rid of all the legends and making it a young guys’ promotion.”
He continued, explaining his plans for Daniel Bryan, who was willing to join TNA at the time.
“At the time, WWE had also fired Daniel Bryan, and my protégé in ECW, who now runs the company called Evolve, Gabe Sapolsky, was very tight with Daniel Bryan because he gave him his first big break. So one of my plans was to bring Daniel Bryan into TNA at the time, and he was quite willing to do so, as he wrote in his own book.”
However, TNA wasn’t willing to part with its established stars like Hulk Hogan, Sting, and Ric Flair.
This reluctance to shift away from older legends led Heyman to walk away from the offer.
“They didn’t want to get rid of the old guys. They just didn’t; they said, ‘Sorry, we don’t want to do it’; they had Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff—no knock on Eric Bischoff this time—they had Sting, they had Mick Foley, they had Ric Flair, they had Kevin Nash, they had the Dudley Boys, they had Rob Van Dam, they had Jeff Hardy; they had ten people who were considered legends. How can you build around the young guys when you’re giving all this TV time to people who are legends?”
Heyman ultimately decided not to join TNA, unwilling to compromise his vision. He reflected on his previous experience with WWE’s version of ECW, which he felt was a failure, and didn’t want to risk repeating that with TNA.
“I wasn’t going to come back into this industry and fail. I already felt that I had failed with the new ECW; I couldn’t stop WWE from doing to the legacy of that brand what they did; I didn’t want to relive it by getting back into the business only to fail again.”
In the end, Heyman chose not to pursue the opportunity with TNA, feeling the promotion wasn’t ready to make the necessary changes. Today, he remains a crucial part of WWE, happy with where his career has taken him.
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