Four months ago, Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff were named Executive Directors of Raw and SmackDown respectively. This was the start of an attempt to revamp the product, atleast in image, an initiative which seems to still be a work-in-progress even now.
Heyman was already involved with Raw creatively and seemed to genuinely have a bit more power over time. It would always be Vince’s show, but Heyman atleast seemed to be directly under him. Bischoff on the other hand, seemed an odd move at the time, and even now doesn’t appear to have a legitimate answer.
Anytime someone in WWE was ever asked about Bischoff over the past few months, it was made pretty apparent that he wasn’t doing anything. At most he would show up, and be spotted in catering. From the beginning, there was speculation that he was something of a figurehead role. At best it was floated out that his role might’ve been to help negotiate with Fox executives, as that’s more his forte. Other times it was implied he was still getting brushed up on the product and being groomed for a real role whilst Bruce Prichard was filling in as a standby.
Still a more nefarious explanation was offered… that being that he’s essentially there as a big name to try and con stockholders into thinking big, positive changes were coming. And furthermore, in the event of things going awry, he’d be an easy scapegoat to get rid of without actually affecting anything.
Now, it would appear that has come to pass.
Eric Bischoff has officially been replaced by Bruce Prichard as Executive Director of SmackDown.
Indeed, after just four months “on the job”, seemingly before ever actually getting to do a damn thing, Eric Bischoff has been fired as of today. It would appear that he is no longer with WWE in any capacity. Similar to Heyman’s status on Raw, Prichard has already been the guy working directly under Vince on SmackDown. Essentially all they’re doing is being transparent about his role now.
For Bischoff, this is a tad sad. He actually moved to Stamford, Connecticut as part of this. Stamford of course being where WWE HQ is located. This implies that he was actually willing to make quite a commitment to this job. It’s easy to infer that he was told his role would be much more significant than it really was.
His firing comes after a pretty disappointing week for WWE. The heavily promoted 2019 Draft is largely considered to be a bust. Last week’s SmackDown saw a drop in a million viewers, in spite of all the hype, on just Week 2 of the run on Fox. Now that we’re moving into the period where a drop was expected to occur, it’s hard to be optimistic for Week 3’s ratings.
Fox can’t be happy about this and they’ve undoubtedly let Vince know. So, true to earlier speculations, Bischoff is being cut loose, seemingly as a ploy to convince them that things will be looking up after he’s gone.
It’s hard to spin this in any optimistic way for WWE. No part of this is a particularly good look. The new boom period for WWE that Vince was expecting doesn’t look to be on the horizon. But on a lighter note, I do think pro wrestling as a whole is on the precipice of one…
