Vince McMahon taps former rivals to run WWE shows

It sounds like a cruel plot twist in a WWE storyline, but the news is real.

Vince McMahon, the longtime boss of the wrestling empire, has tapped two of his ex-rivals to run the weekly shows “Monday Night Raw” and “SmackDown Live” — a surprise move that looks like a gut punch for his son-in-law Paul Levesque, a top executive at the company.

The two new hires — Paul Heyman, the former president of one-time WWE challenger Extreme Championship Wrestling, and Eric Bischoff, former president of Ted Turner’s defunct World Championship Wrestling — on Thursday were named executive directors of “Raw” and “SmackDown,” respectively.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Eric Sherman, the former chief strategy officer of Impact Wrestling, a weekly show on the Canada-based Fight Network. “Vince now has his two toughest competitors over the years in charge of his business.”

Both will report directly to McMahon, WWE’s chairman and CEO.

Sherman saw the shuffle as “a big slap in the face” to Levesque, who is married to the boss’s daughter Stephanie McMahon, WWE’s chief brand officer, and who wrestles in the ring under the name “Triple-H.”

Under Levesque, WWE’s executive vice president of talent, live events and creative, WWE has been blamed for tired in-ring performances and slumping ratings in the US — issues that have lately been offset by new distribution deals and overseas expansion.

Most notable was a five-year deal announced a year ago to move “SmackDown” to Fox for $1.025 billion, three times more than what current rights holder NBCU is paying.

This week’s viewership of 2.28 million for “Raw” was down 15% from a year ago, while the 1.86 million attracted to “SmackDown” was off 13%.

The fight for eyeballs is expected to stiffen this fall when All Elite Wrestling — an upstart owned by Pakistani American billionaire “Shad” Khan — begins airing live weekly matches on WarnerMedia’s TNT.

BTIG analyst Brandon Ross called WWE’s new hires “a direct response” to both the ratings slump and looming competition from AEW.

see also

Paul Heyman, Eric Bischoff hirings is the shakeup WWE needed

With the next great wrestling war potentially upon us, WWE…

Click Here: online rugby store malaysia

Sagging viewership is already dragging down WWE’s live events and consumer products businesses, Ross said, whereas AEW is having no problems drawing in-ring talent from any of its competitors, including WWE.

The analyst added that Heyman and Bischoff both have a deep appreciation for wrestling as a “technical sport,” which stands in contrast to WWE’s emphasis on “theatrical entertainment.”

“Together they should be able to meld the two,” he said.

The new executives join WWE at a time its control freak CEO is gearing up for a relaunch of pro football league XFL, which has a February 2020 launch date.

Sources doubted, however, that McMahon’s new sideline had anything to do with the shake-up orchestrated by the CEO — despite his committing $500 million to the league he’s expected to micromanage much as he did WWE.