Paul Heyman Talks Emotional WWE Raw Promo With Cody Rhodes
Paul Heyman has explained what he and Cody Rhodes were trying to accomplish during a memorable in-ring promo segment on WWE Monday Night Raw.
The February 6th episode of Raw saw Cody Rhodes in the ring doing a promo about WrestleMania 39 talking about his championship match against the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns. Cody earned the championship match by winning the Men’s Royal Rumble.
Paul Heyman, the Special Counsel to Reigns, entered the building and joined Cody in the ring. What happened from there was a very interesting promo exchange between Rhodes and Heyman sharing memories of Cody’s late, WWE Hall of Fame father Dusty Rhodes.
Cody told a heartwarming story about how in 2000, when Dusty wasn’t in a prominent role in pro wrestling, Heyman booked Dusty in an ECW storyline. Cody spoke about how it gave Dusty a lot of confidence while also paying Dusty some money that was needed at the time. Paul Heyman is known for being an evil man at times, but he also talked about how much he loved and respected Dusty.
While everything seemed to be positive, Heyman decided to turn it a bit by saying that Cody Rhodes was Dusty’s favorite son, but Roman Reigns was the son that the son Dusty always wanted, which drew massive boos from the crowd. Cody said that everybody wants to make it personal and that’s what Heyman just did. Cody told Heyman he isn’t going to pay for it, Roman Reigns will pay for it when Cody takes those titles…personally.
During an appearance on the SI Media podcast, Paul Heyman talked about his mindset going into the promo saying he liked pressure.
“I like pressure. I don’t find pressure to be burdensome. I find it to be inspiring. We have Cody coming out of the gates now one-on-one with Roman because this was the night after the Elimination Chamber where Roman Reigns defeats Sami Zayn. so you know it won’t be Sami, you know it’s going to be Cody challenging Roman and an audience. I’m sorry, this was before the Elimination Chamber, but an audience that is really honed in on the arrival of Sami Zayn as a superstar.”
As he continued, Paul Heyman explained what they were trying to accomplish with the promo segment.
“Here’s Cody, with his own narrative, his own story to tell, and as he will tell his story to finish. And a compelling one at that, and an emotional one at that. We have to tell his story as well. The pressure is we have a first time WrestleMania main event and an audience that is very critical of new people in the main event of WrestleMania.”
“The pressure really was to demonstrate Cody Rhodes as someone who is capable of hanging with and telling himself a WrestleMania main event level story for the audience to absorb and become invested in.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Paul Heyman explained that he knew The Bloodline storyline would work because of his confidence in Roman Reigns as a performer.