Paul Heyman takes the blame for failing to turn Brock Lesnar’s hometown crowd against him

WWE performer Paul Heyman spoke with Brian Fritz of Sporting News and addressed his promo not turning the Minneapolis, Minnesota crowd against Brock Lesnar on Raw. “I’ll take full blame for it,” Heyman said. “I’ll tell you why. If I am, as people claim that I am, the best or one of the best or one of the greatest fill in the adjective of all time in terms of someone who can deliver a promo, and if I can go out in Chicago, right before WrestleMania, when CM Punk had just walked out and the 18,000 people in Chicago were hellbent and driven on hijacking that show — I opened the show coming out to Punk’s music, sit down in his pose, never raise my voice, shut them up, lure them in, get them to buy that I’m on their side, double cross them and sell them on Brock Lesnar versus Undertaker and shut down the CM Punk chant all without ever raising my voice — then I’m surely talented enough to go into Minneapolis and manipulate the crowd to say or do anything I want them to say or do.

“That’s my job. I am supposed to take an impossible situation and make it look easy. And if I am as good as people say that I am, and I dare suggest I’m better than that, then Minneapolis would have been just another story to add to the story of Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman. Ultimately, I failed in my task and I own up to my failures like a man and I accept them and I move forward. Lesson learned. If I’m faced with a similar situation again, I know what I would do differently but I’m surely not going to reveal it to the public because then they’ll know how I’m going to handle it.” Read the full interview at SportingNews.com.

Powell’s POV: Heyman is being kind because it was a lot to ask even him to turn the Minneapolis crowd against Lesnar. He actually did better than expected, though. I attended the show in person and was surprised when half the crowd was chanting “Goldberg” at one point. The problem was that the Lesnar fans abandoned their pro-Lesnar chant in favor of chanting “Goldberg sucks” and then the Goldberg fans had nothing to come back with. Heyman also addresses the Goldberg vs. Lesnar match, Lesnar at WrestleMania, and whether he believes Lesnar will fight in UFC again.