Paul Heyman On Cody Rhodes’ Success Outside WWE, Parallels To Steve Austin

Paul Heyman will be ringside Sunday night for the main event of WrestleMania 34 when his client, Brock Lesnar, defends the WWE Universal Championship against Roman Reigns.

Later this week (Thursday, April 5th), Heyman’s one-man stage show, An Evening With Paul Heyman descends upon New Orleans as one of the weekend’s must-see events.

Heyman has been doing the media rounds to promote both shows and made some very interesting remarks to NBC Sports about Cody Rhodes’ meteoric rise. As a former manager and promoter of wrestling icon Steve Austin, Heyman explained that he sees a parallels between Austin’s success after leaving WCW in 1995 and the success of Cody Rhodes since leaving WWE in 2016.

When asked which WWE Superstars he think could thrive outside of the company like Cody has, Heyman said, “Cody reminds me a lot of when Steve Austin got out of WCW. In that Steve needed to find himself and when I put him on camera in Philadelphia at 5 o’clock in the morning, after a show, is when a truly pissed off, tired, aggravated Steve Austin found his inner persona that morphed into Stone Cold Steve Austin”

Heyman continued, “Cody has found himself in that very same way in that his angst over not being able to bring forward what he envisioned for himself in WWE has propelled him to new heights outside of WWE. He would have never found that within the company. Kudos to Cody for leaving and for sticking to his vision and to finding that box office appeal that has always lived inside of him.”

Heyman said there are certainly WWE performers who could do better working for other promotions, but a big part of peoples’ success is timing and how well they pitch themselves to management. As someone who is well known for recognizing talent and maximizing the value of talent, Heyman says sometimes it’s simply a matter of making the right pitch at the right time to the right person. It’s advice that translates to all aspects of professional life – people should be pitching.