Eric Bischoff gives his thoughts on Paul Heyman saying the Bloodline storyline was still in the bottom of the third inning following Roman Reigns retaining the Undisputed Universal Championship at SummerSlam.
The Hall of Famer spoke on this topic during a recent edition of his Strictly Business podcast, where addressed the baseball analogy and how it shows how much work Heyman and Roman Reigns have put into the story.
To me, there’s nobody more creatively right now than Paul Heyman. But if we’re in the bottom of the third, let’s go from a baseball analogy to a traditional storytelling analogy. If you’re in the middle of act two, which I guess is as close as I can get to equating the bottom of third, if you’re early in the story, as the third inning would represent in a baseball game, you’re still in the early phases of that game, or in this case, story, you’ve got to advance the story. You’ve got to advance it in a way that it’s escalating, it’s building. That’s why they call it an arc. So Paul’s analogy of being in the bottom of the third inning would suggest that he’s just now closing up the first act. If that’s true, oh my gosh, these people should be winning Emmys at some point because they’ve done such a phenomenal job.
He goes on to say that even though the Bloodline storyline has had its lesser moments, they have still done a phenomenal job at telling a story for this long.
To suggest that you can’t strike out in the bottom of the third or you can’t hit a pop-up fly in the bottom of the third, or you can’t commit an error in the bottom of the third, and still win the game and win the World Series, let’s not get too confused about where we’re at and concerned about whether or not they can continue. I think the creative team has demonstrated, without question, that they have the ability and the understanding. Perhaps they just committed an error because perhaps they couldn’t really think a finish to this that was more dramatic, or maybe they just put all of their eggs in the Jimmy turn, assuming that that would be the moment, the dramatic moment in the match, which it could have been and arguably should have been. It just wasn’t. It could have been the way it was executed. Perhaps, hindsight 20/20, everybody’s got it. Doesn’t take a half an ounce of experience or talent or creativity to criticize something after the fact.
Bischoff reminds listeners that there are people on the WWE creative team that also thought the SummerSlam ending came off flat, noting that its not that big of a deal and that they are going to do what they can to get it back on track.
But perhaps as they analyze, and I’m sure they are, and discussing, ‘Okay, that really wasn’t what we hoped it would be, or could be. Perhaps they’re looking at the execution of the turn and going, ‘We could have done that better. We could have done that differently.’ I’m sure they’re going back and they’re analyzing, even while it was happening. There’s a lot of very, very, very experienced, talented creative people back there watching in gorilla. I would not be surprised if back in gorilla they were watching along with everybody else going, ‘That was kind of flat.’ No big deal. An error in the bottom of the third. Or at the end of the first act, as the case may be. There’s another inning coming up. Let’s get the team together, let’s focus, and let’s move on. Bump in the road? I don’t even know if it was a bump. They ran over an empty can, made a little noise. Let’s move on. I’m still very, very optimistic. But I was let down. I thought that match to me was the least interesting and compelling thing on the entire card. I thought everything else on that card was better than that.
The full episode of Strictly Business can be found below.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)