CM Punk Recalls Working With Paul Heyman In OVW, Learning How to Format & Time Shows

CM Punk worked closely with Paul Heyman in the early days of his career and talked about learning from the Wise Man. Punk looked back on that era of his career in OVW on the No-Contest Wrestling Podcast, and you can see highlights below (per Fightful):

On working with Heyman in OVW: “I go down to OVW and boom, they put Paul Heyman there. At this point, I can’t learn from Jim Cornette, excited I get to learn from Paul Heyman. I make friends with Danny Davis, who is equally a legend and has done everything. I dedicated myself to learning as much as I can in that window I thought I had until I get fired. That meant Heyman would fly into Lousiville at 9-10 p.m. on a Tuesday, I’d pick him up at the airport, we’d go right to the Davis Arena, and I’d either watch him just write TV and format it, and he did it like it as me making a cup of coffee. He’s doing all this stuff and he slides it over to me, ‘What do you think? What don’t you understand?’ I learned how to format a show, I learned how to time out a show, half second in and out for commercials. I learned all this stuff. ‘What do you think of this idea? What would you do?’

“He starts asking me questions and next thing I know, that’s on the television show. I’m like, ‘Am I writing the television show?’ The business being the way it was, I did not want anybody to find that out. That would have been more heat on me. We’d do TV on Wednesday night and all Wednesday night I’m in this little closet of a room with Danny Davis and Paul Heyman editing the show. I learned how to edit it. They’re sitting and screaming at each other. These two old school dudes, just yelling at each other. I just tried to learn as much as I could. That was my first experience with Paul Heyman.”

On bonding with Heyman over their reputations: “I learned very fast, ‘He’s down here because other people don’t like him either.’ Me becoming a Paul Heyman guy was more of a Scarlett Letter than anything else. ‘We don’t like Punk. Heyman likes him? We hate him.’ It was one of those things where I was kind of confused, but my attitude was, ‘Me? No, you.’ I was very much under the impression, and there is an alternate universe out there where this did happen, where I took all the knowledge I learned in that short amount of time, I got fired, and I went back to Ring of Honor.”

CM Punk Recalls Working With Paul Heyman In OVW, Learning How to Format & Time Shows

CM Punk Recalls Working With Paul Heyman In OVW, Learning How to Format & Time Shows

CM Punk Recalls Working With Paul Heyman In OVW, Learning How to Format & Time Shows

CM Punk Recalls Working With Paul Heyman In OVW, Learning How to Format & Time Shows

CM Punk Recalls Working With Paul Heyman In OVW, Learning How to Format & Time Shows