Eric Bischoff Reveals The Biggest Challenge Of Being WWE SmackDown Executive Director

He held the role for four months in 2019

Matt jeff hardy

May 18, 2021

Eric Bischoff.png

Eric Bischoff has revealed how indecision within WWE heading into the brand split was the biggest challenge he needed to handle as SmackDown Executive Director.

Bischoff was announced as returning to WWE in June 2019 as a part of the Smackdown team but the former WCW boss departed the company in October of the same year, to be replaced by Bruce Pritchard.

A big part of the 65-year-old's position was managing WWE's relationship with FOX Sports, with SmackDown heading to the broadcaster, but Bischoff has said how indecision over how to split both the WWE roster and the creative team made his job particularly difficult.

Speaking on the 83 Weeks Podcast, Bischoff said: "The biggest challenge for me was everyone knew we were gonna split the roster. At some point, at the draft, we were going to have to publicly reveal what the roster was gonna be for each specific brand. That was hard because there was a lot of indecision back and forth every week.

"There would be a meeting every week. We would have a discussion, and every week, we would leave that meeting with a pretty good idea of where we were at. Then the following week, it would all change again. So, that was in constant flux.

"What made it a lot harder for me was the writing staff was also going to be split so that there would be dedicated writers for each show. Those decisions would change on a weekly basis, all the way up until [SmackDown on FOX] was launched.

"I still believe this to this day, but there is a much better process to be had in the way wrestling is produced across the board, not just in WWE. There is a much better way. There is a formula to everything, and my goal was to create that formula in WWE, at least the framework for it so ideas could go through a process that gave those ideas a much better chance of being successful than just, ‘Let’s just try this’ and then the day of go, ‘I changed my mind, I don’t like that.’

"That’s not a process, that’s an experiment. The odds of a process being successful are much greater than the odds of an experiment being successful."

H/T 411Mania

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