Paul Heyman Does Away With RAW Change, Backstage News On Vince McMahon Editing WWE SmackDown
As noted, this week's WWE SmackDown episode from Memphis, TN was re-written by Vince McMahon, just hours before the show hit the air on the USA Network.
Vince was still working on second hour changes to the original script while the first hour was airing on TV.
Vince reportedly felt like the show that was presented to him did not do a good job of following up from the previous week, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Vince also felt like the script written before the changes did not build to the SummerSlam pay-per-view strong enough.
New blue brand Executive Director Eric Bischoff is now working on the show along with Bruce Prichard, but Bischoff reportedly doesn't have much to do with any creative ideas just yet as he's learning who is what and the overall system.
It was also noted that Daniel Bryan, Kevin Owens and Shane McMahon pitch most of their creative material to the WWE writers, so their segments often come from their ideas. It was also said that Bryan, Shane and Owens seem to be the only Superstars that the writers are listening to.
While Vince continues to have the final word on all WWE creative, it is worth noting that new RAW Executive Director Paul Heyman is already making progress and getting more power under his new role. The Observer reports that Heyman was able to resume in-ring action during commercial breaks and do away with the constant run-ins and angles to stop matches for commercial breaks, and the need to do so many Elimination Matches or 2 of 3 Falls Matches.
On a related note, Vince also made changes to this week's red brand script, according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio. There's no word yet on all of the specific RAW changes this week, but there were not as many as SmackDown. It was noted that Vince made a few minor tweaks to this week's RAW, but it was largely a Heyman-booked show. We noted before that this week's RAW was the episode with the most Heyman influence since he started under the new role.
Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter
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