On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff delved into the intricacies of writing for WWE General Managers, discussed the challenges it entailed, and shared insights into Vince McMahon’s role in WWE creative.
Highlighting the challenges of writing for WWE General Managers, a role he himself had assumed during his tenure in WWE, Bischoff shared,
“When I was doing it on Raw, presumably I had the power to make or break people’s careers. Because I was calling the shots in terms of who got to wrestle who and who put who’s titles up and all that typical general manager authority figure stuff.”
Bischoff also commented on the significant development of Vince McMahon no longer directly overseeing WWE creative, beginning,
“I’ll just kind of start breaking it down into pieces. Let’s start out with Triple H being in charge of creative, which I think is absolutely fantastic news. I can tell you from firsthand experience, with all due respect to Vince because I probably respect Vince McMahon more now than I ever have. It’s just the stage of my life and having the advantage of having seen the industry, and been a part of the industry for over 30 years and how it’s evolved, and all of the things that Vince McMahon personally and as a company has overcome and achieved. I have more respect for Vince McMahon today than I ever have. That being said, I was also there in 2019 when I was brought in to quote-unquote oversee the SmackDown brand and from day one, I didn’t know who was on my writing team. It changed daily. We weren’t allowed to really have any conversations relating to going forward because the decisions to break up the writing team, one with Paul Heyman, one with Eric Bischoff, that was in a state of flux from the time that I got there to the day that I left. So I never really knew who was on my team. More importantly, the writing staff had no idea who their leader was. They didn’t know if I was their boss or Paul Heyman was going to be their boss or Vince McMahon was going to be their boss. They had no idea, so you’ve got a writing team that’s walking on eggshells, especially back then because there were a lot of things going on. So I had a team that I supposedly, and I use the term carefully, supposedly, was overseeing that I didn’t know if they were on my team or not on my team, and they didn’t know if I was their boss or somebody else was their boss.”
Bischoff then highlighted the potential benefits of having a clear leader in charge of creative and providing the creative team with a sense of direction and confidence in their work.
“While that was going on, of course everybody still had to write television because Vince McMahon had to approve literally everything that was on that television show, and you never knew if what he said was going to be approved on Saturday was still going to be approved by Monday morning, or at five o’clock Monday afternoon, so there was a state of confusion that existed there. It may have been Vince McMahon’s genius kind of creating controlled chaos, hoping that the best rise to the top. I kind of think that’s part of it. Still, I can tell you from my firsthand experience and from observing the people that I theoretically oversaw it made it difficult for everybody. If Ari Emanuel made the decision, which apparently he has, to make sure that everybody on that creative staff knows who their boss is and what the expectations are, most importantly, and that they can move forward with confidence in that knowledge, I think it was a fantastic move that was far overdue.”
(h/t 411mania)
