WHY I'M THE PROUDEST "PAUL HEYMAN GUY" OF ALL -  By Joey Styles

These comments were originally supposed to be part of the 10 "Paul Heyman Guys" feature on WWE.com http://www.wwe.com/classics/paul-heyman-guys/ but Paul's interview was so lengthy that we just decided to transcribe the interview and give him the byline.

Regardless, I had put so much thought into why I was a "Paul Heyman Guy" and my professional relationship with Paul that I didn't want my words go to waste.

A few months before graduating from Hofstra University, I sent my audition tape calling professional wrestling on SportsChannel America (now NBC Sports) to WWE (which was a mile from my house), WCW and Paul Heyman who I had met Paul while I was interning at Pro Wrestling Illustrated. Paul was performing as Manager, Paul E. Dangerously in WCW.

As the days to my graduation ticked down, I aggressively followed up with phone calls to WWE and WCW in an attempt to get one opportunity, a single audition, a leap at the brass ring to prove that I was good enough to be an asset to their companies as a professional wrestling announcer. To be blunt, WWE and WCW blew me off.

Upon graduation, I had been fortunate enough to be recruited for a division of News Corporation's sales training program. (I am still eternally grateful to Chairman and CEO and now New York Post Publisher, Paul Carlucci for giving a kid from the Bronx a chance to compete against recruits from blue chip schools around the country).

With what seemed to be a bright future in sales ahead of me, I was by no means ready to abandon my dream of professional wrestling play-by-play. I made a call to Paul Heyman. At the time I Paul had left WCW and was managing the likes of "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka and "Magnificent" Don Muraco in a South Philadelphia wrestling promotion called ECW (Eastern Championship Wrestling). Paul returned my call the same day and told me to come down to the next ECW event in Philly to audition.

Put simply, Paul Heyman was the only one in professional wrestling to have seen enough potential in me to even give me an audition. He didn't even bother asking permission of his boss, ECW Owner Tod Gordon (who ended up asking me who the hell I was and what I was doing in his locker room while catching in my underwear changing into my suit).

Regardless of that humiliating incident that was the reason I switched from "tightie whities" to boxer briefs, three months later, when Paul became the Creative Director and Executive Producer (we used the term Booker back then because there was an actual book of upcoming wrestling cards that was constantly updated), the first thing he did was make me “The Voice of ECW”.

That's right, Paul started his dream career as a professional wrestling Booker with the entire industry watching him and most people routing for him to fail by letting an unknown 21 year old announcer host his weekly television show.

Paul was my color commentator and spent countless hours late into the night teaching me how to be the best professional wrestling announcer I could possibly be the same way Jim Ross had taught him in WCW. In what little spare time I had, I studied so many tapes of Jim Ross and Vince McMahon announcing that I broke a VCR by constantly pressing rewind and play.

A couple of years into burning the candle at both ends by juggling my sales and professional wrestling announcing careers, Paul did what he still does best, he played to my strengths. Knowing that I was no longer a sales assistant but a successful ad salesman, Paul offered me an unheard of fifty percent commission for any additional sources of revenue that I brought into the fledgling ECW.

Motivated by what I saw as the greatest financial opportunity of my young life, I pushed myself harder than I ever thought I could. Working seven days a week juggling multiple careers, I secured some TV advertisers, created and managed ECW’s pay-per-minute 900 telephone news service (this was before the internet exploded) and then created and managed ECW’s website, including ad sales and promotion of the website in magazines like Pro Wrestling Illustrated (never did I imagine that I would one day be making a career working in WWE Digital and Social Media).

The revenues for the telephone news service and then the website earned so much revenue for ECW that even after my commission, the money I generated for ECW was more than ECW was paying me to announce. Paul knew how much money I was making and never tried to lower my commission rate because he wanted me motivated to bring in more revenue.

When ECW aired on national cable TV in 2000, the revenues for both the 900 number and website doubled! I earned more money that year than in any year since then. My wife and I continued to live our modest lifestyle and conservatively invested the additional income.

The opportunities Paul Heyman gave me almost 20 years ago changed my life in many ways. Not only did he allow me to change my family's financial future but also develop a reputation in professional wrestling that allowed me to eventually become a WWE announcer and then transition into WWE Digital and Social Media which brings the story of my career up to date.

Simply put, I am the proudest “Paul Heyman Guy” of them all. Period.

In closing, I'd like to go on record stating that I whole heartedly believe that Paul is deserving of being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and I hope it happens the night before WrestleMania 29 in the NY/NJ area in front of his family and friends. It would be the right place and the right time and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.