Vince McMahon’s creative process helped take WWE to incredible heights while also frustrating those who worked alongside him.
For years there were stories of scripts being torn up and rewritten just hours before shows went on the air, with meetings running into the early hours of the morning. One man who has first-hand experience of this chaos is Eric Bischoff. The former WCW boss worked as an on-screen character with WWE from 2002 to 2007 before returning as the Executive Director of SmackDown in June 2019. However, he was replaced just four months later.
Eric Bischoff Recalls Working With Vince McMahon
Speaking in a new interview with Chris Van Vliet, Eric Bischoff recalled his experience of working with McMahon in 2019. The former Raw General Manager said that many of the stories that people have heard are true, adding that the process wasn’t “conducive to great creativity.”
“Obviously I wasn’t there on the inside when Vince left. I was there for 4 months, I worked with Vince almost every day. On those days we did work together, it was often for hours and hours and hours. I don’t want to say that I know Vince McMahon, because I don’t, I don’t think anybody does outside of his immediate family. We all get little glimpses of him, but I don’t think many people really know Vince McMahon.
My experience was Vince had a strong vision, clearly, look where WWE is today, clearly he has had a strong vision throughout his life. The challenge for me and the people I worked with on the creative side were to come up with things that would get Vince’s attention in a positive way. You never knew what that was going to be, because there was no consistency there. Every day was a brand new day, it’s not like I could get a read on Vince McMahon. I think that stifled creativity a lot.
You’ve heard these stories, and I don’t mean to share these experiences as like a tell all or anything negative, because it worked for them and it worked for Vince McMahon, I wish I could have figured those out. But you have heard the stories of showing up to television at 1 o’clock, tearing up the script and starting from scratch. Those aren’t exaggerations. That process, or lack thereof, is not conducive to great creativity.
And I think, I’m guessing on this, because I don’t know Paul Levesque well either, I have worked a long time around him. Paul had been a part of that creative process long enough to know what the weak points were, to know what was holding it back, to know what was frustrating the people that were charged with coming up with good creative. I think that Paul made a lot of those changes very quickly, and I would imagine that the quality of the writing and the quality of the creative got much tighter. Writers got more confidence, because it was a more predictable environment, just the quality went up, that’s my take.”
Vince McMahon retired from his role with WWE in July 2022 following a string of sexual misconduct claims were made against him, while it is alleged that he paid more than $12 million in secret settlements to supress the allegations.
On December 13th it was reported that Vince McMahon was looking to return to WWE, this is despite facing fresh allegations of sexual assault.
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