Paul Heyman Talks To Steve Austin About WWE Firing In 2004, Makes Surprising Admission

Paul Heyman appeared on the Steve Austin's podcast, The Steve Austin Show – Unleashed!, in the second part of a two-part interview series on the show. During the episode, Heyman spoke to Austin about being fired in 2004. Shortly after the release of the Rise and Fall of ECW DVD, Heyman had a big falling out with the company and was sent home because he got busted listening to the wrong conference call. However, Heyman never really heard anything on that fateful day.

He explains back in 2004, the calls were incredibly brutal because Vince McMahon would be at home bored on a Saturday and he would want to go over Raw and SmackDown, even though he and both creative teams would do so days prior. Heyman wanted time off Saturday mornings to take his kids to the park since he was always working.

Heyman said the calls would start at 10am and McMahon wanted to discuss Raw first, since it was the flagship show. He told the SmackDown people to tune out and he would tell them to come back on. Heyman told Austin that McMahon would take a small washroom break or a few seconds to grab a protein bar and would start reviewing SmackDown right away — with or without members of the team.

Someone would call Heyman at the park and tell him McMahon was ready for him, so he would rush home to his computer and McMahon would already be halfway into his show review. Heyman felt like "a slave to the process of being on the phone for a conference call."

After explaining this to Austin, Heyman said his girlfriend came up with the idea that Friday nights would be their night out and once he got back, he would stay up all night writing the show. He would send it to his assistant to type it out and they would send it at 6 a.m., wait until the call and say hello to everyone. Then, Heyman would go back to sleep. While his significant other took the kids to the park, he would wake up and be put on the call. Heyman confirmed that he would also stay on the line when McMahon was done with him, leave his phone charged on mute and go back to sleep so that he would always be available.

On that particular day, his phone was unplugged. After two hours, the phone dies and they're talking about Raw's contributions to WrestleMania that particular year. Then, the team hears a click and the phone message heard was that someone left the conference call. McMahon and his team were outraged that someone was listening in and proceeded to research who was listening in. They found out it was Heyman and Stephanie McMahon, who was taking care of SmackDown at the time, was extremely angry.

Stephanie asked Heyman how he could have done this to her and if he had any idea how upset Vince was at her. She demanded an explanation and Heyman swore he didn't listen in, because he went back to sleep. He enraged both Vince and Stephanie, but stuck to his story because it was factual.

He then told Austin he listened in to the six previous Raw conference calls they had prior to that one, as they laughed together because it was typical of a hard-working wrestling promoter to do that.

He was released after a match between The Undertaker and John Heidenreich on an episode of SmackDown, in which The Undertaker delivered a Tombstone to Heyman and put him in a casket.

Source: The Steve Austin Show