Paul Heyman joined Busted Open w/ Dave LaGreca and Bully Ray (Bubba Ray Dudley) today 20 years after ECW’s very first PPV Barely Legal. He commented on the event itself 20 years later, Bubba Ray shattering his ankle and finishing the match (including taking Total Elimination for the pin) and most interestingly gave his thoughts on keeping Taz and Sabu apart for an entire year leading up to their grudge match at the paper and why we don’t see “slow burn” feuds like that anymore.
You can read a few transcribed excerpts, as well as listen to Heyman’s appearance on the show in the player below:
Paul Heyman comments on the slow burn of the Taz versus Sabu storyline, how they kept it fresh:
If you watch the first episode of the TV series ‘Dallas’, with Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy, the first episode, and the first two seasons until JR got shot, were all self-inclusive, but they all ended with a cliffhanger. So, they always left you wanting more, but each individual episode told a story that was self-inclusive. And in the art, or arc, of storytelling, that’s where we came up with all the things with Sabu and Taz, where every week could tell a story, but the story continued, but you knew that ultimately these two were going to have to fight. To have a babyface like Sabu, never ever answered the challenge, and to have a heel like Taz tell a story, and you’re sitting there thinking there’s merit to his argument. I understand why he’s so bitter, I can see what makes this character so angry.
This was something that had not been done before, where the babyface was in the wrong, and he has not answered the challenge, and the heel is in the right, and he’s being an asshole about it, which is why the public gripped on to the two of them immediately. But, why it was such a slow story to tell was that every week you were waiting for Taz to drop a bomb like ‘oh, and by the way I stole your wife’ or ‘oh, I stole your money’ or ‘I’m the guy that burned down your house’ or ‘I’m the guy that killed your father’ or whatever it is. You’re busy waiting for Sabu to say ‘I was busy saving a kitten from a tree’ or ‘I was doing a charity event’; you’re waiting for Sabu to tell you something and say now I understand his perspective, but he never gave you his perspective. And every time Taz said something you go ‘Oh my, the son of a bitch is right!’, and meanwhile he’s victimizing Mikey Whipwreck or Pablo Marquez or the Dudley Boyz or Rob Van Dam or anybody. He’s victimizing everybody and anyone in the company, and it’s all in the name of Sabu. And meanwhile, he’s victimizing these people and motivation it’s the catalyst and it’s proper and he has the right to be mad. So, once you get to those storylines it’s easy, because you just want to tell another chapter.
The hardest part is the first five or six weeks because you get them that close to each other and we knew at November to Remember ’95 that when they got into the ring together at the same time, one moment together, you could never see them this close until they squared off. And then it became a game. It became a very fun game. I can’t even tell you it was challenging; it was art. We enjoyed the storyline as much as people enjoyed watching.
Busted Open can be heard weekdays from 2p-4p ET only on SiriusXM Rush Channel 93 and any time on the SiriusXM app
