Paul Heyman Takes Full Blame For Failing To Turn Brock Lesnar’s Hometown Crowd Against Him

One week after Goldberg agreed to battle Brock Lesnar one-on-one, The Conqueror and Paul Heyman emerged on Raw to address the WCW icon’s return. The show took place in Lesnar’s hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and as you would expect, the crowd chanted in favor of the hometown Lesnar despite Heyman’s attempts to get them to back Goldberg.

During an interview with Brian Fritz of SportingNews.com, Paul Heyman was asked whether he would have done anything differently. His response:

PH: I would not have accepted the booking for Minneapolis.

SN: Anything else?

PH: I would not have let Brock Lesnar appear in Minneapolis.

SN: That was a tough one to sell, wasn’t it?

PH: I’ll take full blame for it. 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.