Jim Ross recalls his WCW broadcasting days with Paul Heyman and Missy Hyatt

In this installment of looking at the various broadcast partners I?ve had the privilege of working with over the years, we remain in WCW during the late ?80s and the early ?90s.

Paul Heyman was a brash, talented New Yorker who was only 23 years of age when we became TV partners in Atlanta for WCW. The revolving door of the dysfunctional household known as World Championship Wrestling provided me the opportunity to work with several skilled individuals in various broadcasting roles, but none fit the antagonist role better than Scarsdale, N.Y.?s son of an attorney and a man I dubbed ?Happy Heyman.?

Paul was a lifelong fan of the business, growing up on a steady diet of WWWF and beginning to attend events at Madison Square Garden as a teen. I met Paul through the late Eddie Gilbert before he started in WCW and knew right away that ?Happy? was a special talent. While Heyman was attempting to create his niche in managing at the time, which required stellar verbal skills, which Paul had, I was in need of a new broadcast partner, especially when WCW cleared a station in New York City for a customized show for that market.

WCW higher-ups never highly prioritized the show and gave me a free hand on who I wanted to work with on it. Many within WCW did not want to be around the bombastic Heyman, but I had a gut feeling that we just might click.

Paul grew up in the New York City market and knew it thoroughly. He used the ?Page Six? column of the New York Post for some of his material, which served the program well. Now as for being on time for work, I occasionally had issues with the high strung, multi-tasking, up-all-night Heyman. But when Paul got in the announce booth, he was money. I?ve often said that Paul was ?easy to dislike,? which is a supreme compliment for any villain of the genre.

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