Riddle has been pretty vicious towards Goldberg on social media since the botch fest in Saudi. Can't imagine the company approves. Would love to see them book a match between the two resulting in a Goldberg squash as punishment.
WWE® NAMES PAUL HEYMAN AND ERIC BISCHOFF EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS
Stamford, Conn., June 27, 2019 – WWE (NYSE: WWE) today announced that it has named Paul Heyman as Executive Director of Monday Night Raw and Eric Bischoff as Executive Director of SmackDown Live, newly created positions reporting directly to WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon.
In their executive roles, Heyman and Bischoff will oversee the creative development of WWE's flagship programming and ensure integration across all platforms and lines of business. The creation of these roles further establishes WWE's ability to continuously reinvent its global brand while providing two distinct creative processes for its flagship shows.
With more than 30 years of experience in the sports entertainment industry, Heyman served as President of ECW from 1993-2001, securing pay-per-view distribution for the company as well as a national cable television deal with TNN. After his time with ECW, Heyman joined WWE's Creative team and is widely credited with helping launch the careers of many current and former WWE Superstars.
Bischoff is a former WCW President and New York Times bestselling author. During his WCW career, Bischoff oversaw the signing of some of the biggest names in sports entertainment and helped create and develop the NWO storyline. He was also instrumental in securing a television deal for WCW Monday Nitro on TNT and WCW Thunder on TBS. After WCW, Bischoff co-founded Bischoff-Hervey Entertainment, a production company that launched TV reality shows and mobile games.
Yeah this seems like huge, good news to me. Even if Vince is still running a lot, the fact that he's acknowledging he can't do all of this himself is big. This is the kind of big change that needed to happen and it will be interesting to see how much it actually impacts the shows.
I mean, I'm not even sure what the above statement means. Are we supposed to believe, Vince is not only handing off some creative control, but also bypassing Trips and giving it to Bischoff and Heyman? It feels like a meaningless figure head position, maybe more for on air use.
On a separate note, seems there's been an edict to eliminate matches through commercial breaks, which is why we're seeing these 2 out of 3 falls things and Teddy Long specials (start as singles, evolve into tag teams after interference and a break).
Triple H is still doing NXT/NXT UK/etc and will replace Vince eventually. This isn't Vince stepping down; it's him handing a lot of the reins to two experienced guys and being more hands off on the storylines instead of micromanaging and muddling everything. At least that's the optimistic view. It's hard to believe Heyman/Bischoff would sign on unless there were assurances they would have some creative autonomy.
I am baffled at the overwhelming praise at WWE - which suffers massively from clinging to the 90s and often gets blasted for recycling ideas that were worn out over a decade ago - signing two guys that ran wrestling companies into the ground in the late 90s/early 00s as their new head tv people.
I'm skeptical about any of it working. Heyman's at least creative. Bischoff, not so much. He even said so on the first or second episode of his podcast. No idea why he'd get hired for a creative position.
Yeah, I mean if you thought that Heymans not to blame for being stale for years, not to blame for pretty much every angle he's been in being boring, and that he's still a creative genius, then maybe I'd be optimistic.
There's no such argument to be made for Bischoff. The guy ran WCW into the ground and turned TNA from good to awful by constantly pushing the envelope in weird ways and relying on big names well past their prime due to nostalgia hopes. He's the worst possible person to come in if you're hoping things change for the better.
Heyman was highly praised when he had control of Smackdown, which was after ECW. I feel like it's pretty clear he has a good mind for the business. I'm more skeptical of Bischoff but at this point getting any different eyes on the show instead of Vince feels like a positive to me.
This is all speculation on them having any creative control, right?
Nothing has actually been said about what they're going to be doing, if anything, right?
I'm assuming they'll just be more voices added to the already large writing team and Vince will still be making all the decisions (i.e. they'll just be consultants feeding Vince options like everyone else, and like always Vince will end up doing what he wants).
atm they're just titles. Though, last year, when Vince announced the XFL relaunch, he said he'd be handing over most of the day-to-day operations of the 'E. So it's actually pretty likely Vince is mostly done with creative once next February's here and this is the transition.
I don't think Heyman and Bischoff would sign on just to be another writer who gets vetoed and shut down by Vince. Things could change obviously, but for now I assume the idea is to take a lot of the creative load and day-to-day stuff off Vince's shoulders.