WWE announced on Thursday that former WCW executive producer Eric Bischoff has been rehired by the company to work as the new executive director for SmackDown Live. The full scope of his position (and Paul Heyman’s position of the same title for Monday Night Raw) has not been revealed yet, but he will report directly to Vince McMahon and will be heavily involved in the show’s creative direction.
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“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 press release read. “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.”
In an interesting twist, the announcement came just days after the Inside the Ropes YouTube channel posted a clip from an interview where Bischoff gave his thoughts on WWE’s brand split. Thanks to the “Wild Card Rule” that was introduced back in early May, the current iteration of the brand split is all but dead given how freely wrestlers can appear on both shows.
Bischoff said if he were put in a position of power (and look at that, now he is!) he’d enforce a strict brand split and do everything in his power to make SmackDown and Raw feel different.
“This is the third attempt a major promotion brand extension,” Bischoff said. “The first one was mine. (WCW Monday Nitro and WCW Thunder), it was kind of short-lived and it really wasn’t a pretty sight. … I think after going through my own experience and having been apart of the WWE’s experience, the advice that I have would be to be as disciplined as you can possibly be at keeping the brands distinct. If you don’t make them feel completely different, it won’t work. And part of that is creating stakes, part of that is it’s got to feel real, it’s got to believable or nobody is going to buy into it.
“But don’t let the talent start transitioning back and forth because you dilute the concept, they won’t feel like two brands. They’ll just feel like two different shows, which is what they already feel like. Because WWE does such a great job of producing such a phenomenal show, it’s almost too perfect. There’s no grit. It needs to feel a little gritty, at least one of them. They don’t both have to feel gritty but one of them has to feel a little edgy, a little dangerous, like something is going to happen that you wouldn’t expect on one show because it’s a little less sophisticated. That’s the magic.”
