The following is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Slam Wrestling! with former WWE/WCW and ECW personality Paul Heyman. You can read the entire piece if you click here.
"Heyman says his first true encounter with brutal anti-Semitism was an encounter with legendary booker "Cowboy" Bill Watts, who the WWE has chosen to be inducted in its 2009 Hall of Fame, just a few short months after America elected its first African-American President.
"I’d never met Watts before," Heyman recalled with a terse lip. "The first time I met him was when he became the head of WCW. We weren’t two minutes into our conversation when he asked me where my beanie was [referring in an offensive way to a yarmulke]. He then started comparing me to a manager back in the day called Izzy Slapowitz."
Heyman half-laughed, "I could see we were really going to get along just great!"
According to Heyman, he says this was the first of numerous anti-Semitic remarks he had to endure while working for Watts.
"After a televised wrestling show, the ratings came in, and Watts was livid," Heyman remembered. "This was during the storyline with Madusa [Miceli]. Our segment was the highest rated segment of that program … and Watts says — in front of a room full of people — how pissed off it makes him that a Jew and a cunt drew the highest rating of the show. He felt it was the downfall of the wrestling business."
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
