Former WWE Executive Says 2019 Draft Was A “Nightmare”

Former WWE Executive Says 2019 Draft Was A “Nightmare”

Taking to his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff opened up about his role as SmackDown Executive Director, a position he held from June to October of last year, before being replaced by Bruce Prichard.

Bischoff spoke about how the roles might have made sense in theory, but didn’t really work all that well in practise. He also spoke about the creative input he was given on SmackDown during his time in charge of the brand:

The positions of executive director of RAW and Smackdown were brand new positions,” Bischoff said. “I think they had been thought through very well on paper, but they hadn’t been executed or integrated into an actual process. There wasn’t really clarity on what that position was. I think there was some fuzziness or fog in regard to clarity for the position.

“Paul [Heyman] didn’t have any more creative control than I did. The only person there who had creative influence was Vince McMahon. Everybody else’s job was to come to the table with ideas and then Vince would pretty much take them from there. I had as much access to Vince as I wanted to have.”

Eric Bischoff oversaw Friday Night SmackDown’s first show on FOX, which came just a few weeks before he was replaced by Bruce Prichard. Here’s what Bischoff had to say on the matter during his podcast:

“A lot of excitement, a lot of chaos,” Bischoff mentioned. “Anytime you’re doing a live show, in WWE especially, there’s a lot of last minute changes and modifications. You’re constantly dealing with variables or changes, some minor, some radical, some you have time for and some you’re fixing literally on the fly. There’s always this sense of controlled chaos at a big event like this premier was… We were still trying to navigate roster splits. I’ve never been through something like that in my life, just hundreds of hours of my life that I’ll never get back. It was tough.”

Along with SmackDown’s debut on FOX, Eric Bischoff also oversaw the 2019 WWE Draft and helped select the roster for the blue brand. Bischoff called the experience nothing short of a “nightmare”:

“That was just a freaking nightmare right up until the final moments we went on air,” Bischoff said. “It was constant second guessing, back and forth, last minute changes. It was just brutal.

“I’m watching now and I know the draft is going on now and I’m thinking man, I haven’t heard from Bruce [Prichard] in a long time and I’m going to wait till after this is all over to reach out to him. This is just f***ing miserable if it’s the same as it was last year. I can tell you literally up until the day of the show none of us knew who was going where. Try writing T.V. that way, by the way.”

Speaking of the WWE Draft, WrestleTalk’s own Liam Winnard has ranked and graded every single pick from this year’s draft. You can check out that feature piece by clicking here.

Thanks to WrestlingInc for the transcriptions.

3 years ago by Wrestle Talk

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