Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) discontinued in 2001 and Paul Heyman joined Jim Ross on the WWE Raw commentary team for several months. He also briefly called WWE SmackDown with Ross and Michael Cole, respectively, that year.
Speaking on his “Grilling JR” podcast, Ross spoke about working with Heyman during that period.
“I’ve been known to get fired up out there,” Ross said. “I tried to stab him with a pencil one time, and that came after I did stab Michael Cole with a pencil, just out of emotion. I apologized a gazillion times over that.
“We never rose to violence, but there were a lot of heart-to-heart talks after the show because he couldn’t stand that and I didn’t like doing it, but sometimes you’ve just got to put your foot down and say, ‘No, we can’t go there. Here’s where you should have cut that off, and I gave you a segway to something else, another topic, and you ignored it. So one thing is perhaps you’re not listening,’ which sounds very egocentric for me to say. ‘You’re not listening to me, and I’m JR. What the hell? Who do you think you are, buddy?'”
Ross went on to stated that when he and Heyman started working together in WWE, the former wrestling promoter would bring out a list of things for them to say, and that threw him off.
Ross described Heyman’s list as “bulls**t” because it was too canned and too fake. The AEW commentator said that after a while they began adlibbing, and that was when they delivered their best work. Heyman became the lead writer for the SmackDown brand a few months after the first-ever WWE brand extension. He remained in that position until February 2003.
