Paul Heyman Says ECW Would Have Exploited Social Media

Paul Heyman is never shy about sharing his opinion on things. The former ECW boss has even given a piece of his mind to Jackass star Johnny Knoxville recently. The Mad Genius of Extreme knows quite a bit about how to exploit social media.

A popular hypothetical discussion among fans is how ECW would’ve done in the age of social media. Heyman’s promotion always struggled to get national attention. A viral video here or there could have made a big difference in the land of extreme.

Paul Heyman recently spoke to the Casio’s Cut podcast. Paul said that if he was doing his job of understanding the opportunity, social media could’ve been a huge help for the company. It would’ve been a matter of adapting to changing times.

“We would have exploited that, like every other opportunity and every other platform that we had. I can’t tell you that it would have hurt ECW because if it would hurt ECW, then I wouldn’t be doing my job understanding the parameters and the opportunities that are presented by any platform or any or any concept of distribution that was happening at the time, then again, you know, would it have helped, one would only hope. People who sit there and they say, ‘Well, this ruined this industry.’

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It means you couldn’t keep up. You know, Blackberry couldn’t keep up with smartphones, so BlackBerry went away. Vinyl records — though vinyl is making some sort of a comeback now, it’s really more of a novelty. Vinyl Records couldn’t keep up with CDs, CDs couldn’t come up with streaming network television, television can’t keep up with Netflix.

So either you adapt to the distribution platforms that surround you, or you become obsolete. So would social media have helped ECW? It better have, because that would be the obligation and the onus would have been on us, or we would have gone out of business faster than we did anyway.”

Heyman sounds confident that he would have been able to exploit the changing trends in communication. It’s all a hypothetical at this point, as ECW is long gone. It’s still interesting to think about what might have been if Paul’s company existed in a more connected world.

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H/T Fightful