Heyman demoted as head writer of Smackdown

[Guest Tim Cooke]

Take jdw's word for a grain of salt.....your loss.

 

The WEEE will never figure out what is wrong until they totally overhaul and actually get a booker that can book a wrestling show, not stupid ass writers.

 

There is a ton of potential for BIG $$ matches outside of the WM show. Too bad many of those will never happen.

 

Tim, who was bored to tears by No Way Out for the most part. Gotta love that WWE style of wrestling.

[Kurt Angle Mark 0]

Here is an update from Dave Scherer

 

 

"As we reported on the Newsline last night, the news broke backstage at No Way Out yesterday that Paul Heyman has been removed from his spot as the lead writer of Smackdown by the WWE hierarchy. The change actually happened in the middle of last week, and takes effect immediately. Heyman will now be a talent for the Smackdown brand and what has been termed as a "consultant" to both the Raw and Smackdown shows, which may mean that, like many others in the company, he will do critiques of the shows after they air and then send them to the creative team. Bruce Prichard and Dave Lagana will take Heyman's place at the top of Smackdown. Prichard has played the "Brother Love" character in the past and written for the company for years, including a stint in the 90s where the product was, quite frankly, not very good. Lagana is a former fan who used to go to ECW Arena shows back in the day when he was younger. He then went to college and later to Hollywood, where he worked in a writing capacity on a few TV series, including Friends. Lagana joined WWE, I believe, last year and quickly became Heyman's right hand man on the Smackdown brand, though I have heard that relations between the two cooled in recent months. His rise in the company has been a quick and impressive one.

 

The word of the change in creative began making the rounds among the employees early in the day yesterday. No "official" reason was given as far as I now, but from what I have gathered, the main issue for the move came down to Heyman's many differences of opinion with Executive Producer Kevin Dunn. Dunn, who is the right hand man to Vince McMahon, has more power than almost anyone in WWE and has been at odds with Heyman for months now. I am not sure of the particulars, but things were said to have come to a head between the two men in the last week and the result was Heyman getting pushed out of the top spot on the Smackdown team. In addition to his disagreements with Dunn, Heyman has also verbally sparred on many occasions with Raw lead writer Brian Gewirtz, and others in the company, when he was vocal in his opposition to what he felt were bad storyline ideas. A number of people in the company told me that while Heyman's desire to fight for what he believed in was admirable, it was also professionally suicidal since the WWE Creative Team isn't exactly amenable when it comes to listening to opinions that go against the company line, even when the ideas in questions are horrible.

 

From my position on the outside, this appears to be a very destructive move for WWE. While Heyman can be difficult, and even adversarial, when it comes to fighting for what he believes in, most people would agree that since the split of the writing teams, Smackdown has been, by far, the superior show to Raw. If Heyman's influence is gone from the television shows, I can't see that being a positive in any way. One thing that is very clear is that Heyman was not demoted due to his actual job performance, but rather personality matters that occurred behind the scenes. "

[Guest NoSelfWorth]

And lo, WWE evolves further into WCW.

[Guest notJames]

At this point, the word should be "devolves".

[Guest NoSelfWorth]

Touche.

 

Half the fun in watching WWE is to see what WCW-like fuck up they'll make next.

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

Maybe if Heyman learned to be tactful he'd still be doing what he was doing.

 

And where did it say in the original news bit that his influence has been completely removed? Wasn't it said that he now oversees BOTH shows?

 

Besides, Lagana is described as "a former fan" (of ECW to boot!!) and "Heyman's right hand man". You don't think he picked up on some of Heyman's tactics along the way?

 

I see no reason to panic yet. Smackdown has NOT been THAT much better than RAW lately anyway.

[Guest humongous2002]

Tactful my ass, Heyman has a love and passion for this business just like everybody else in this forum, he has made Smackdown into must see tv but b/c he didn't kiss ass he get's demoted, like everywhere it's not what you know but who you know. Kevin Dunn and Gewertz should go f*** themselves, this is wrestling not a freaking sitcom!

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

When has Smackdown been must-see lately?

 

The only thing that has been non-formulaic and interesting on the show is Rock's brilliant interviews and interactions with Hogan. You can put the two on RAW and get the same result, or even better because of the live factor.

 

But yes, Gewirtz is an idiot.

[Guest humongous2002]

You don't think it wasn't must see tv?With all the awesome wrestling matches with the SD 5 and Edge every week and the Brock Lesnar elevation to me that's must see tv every thursday, if you don't think so then you are in the wrong forum.

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

If it's must see TV to *you*, that doesn't mean it is to anyone else, and what I see is SD again losing to RAW.

 

The SD 6 have good matches in their sleep, therefore the matches have to mean something to me to differentiate them. Does Benoit fighting A-Train two weeks in a row accomplish this? And where were three of the six last week? Edge was injured, but Los Guerreros? In a dumb skit that seemed to prove Cena's racist raps right. But I guess that was Dunn's idea...

 

Hell, where were the 'awesome wrestling matches' last Thursday? Anyone?

[Guest THE MIGHTY THOR]

Well sometimes they have good weeks and bad weeks and in my house every thursday Smackdown is must see tv too, that Kidman/Rey v. Mattitude was pretty awesome too if you ask me.

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

And let me guess.... the bad weeks was when Heyman wasn't allowed to exert his full creativity, right?

 

That's pretty much what the "is Heyman AS good as he and his supporters say he is?" arguments invariably boil down to: the good is ALWAYS because of him and the bad is ALWAYS in spite of him.

[Guest FeArHaVoC]

Half the fun in watching WWE is to see what WCW-like fuck up they'll make next.

It's so Fuckin' Sad how true that is.

[Guest THE MIGHTY THOR]

And let me guess.... the bad weeks was when Heyman wasn't allowed to exert his full creativity, right?

 

That's pretty much what the "is Heyman AS good as he and his supporters say he is?" arguments invariably boil down to: the good is ALWAYS because of him and the bad is ALWAYS in spite of him.

Hey dude , lay off the caffeine, it's only someone's opinion,BY GAWD!!lol.

[Guest BoboBrazil]

Heyman's new position is a fucking joke. This is the same position Vince Russo got after he got removed from the booking team the first day he came back last year. It is a meaningless joke job.

[Zetterberg is God 0]

Is it a crime to express your opinion in WWE? All Heyman did was tell the truth about the state of WWE and suddenly he's demoted. Someone should tell these "adults" to grow up because not everything they do is perfect and when someone tells them the truth, it's not okay to demote them for having an opinion.

[Guest Mad Dog]

But if he was the lone voice on a lot of issues and very confrontational about it then they should've demoted him.

 

We may not like it but if he was in the minority and making everything into an issue why not remove him?

[Guest RedJed]

And let me guess.... the bad weeks was when Heyman wasn't allowed to exert his full creativity, right?

 

That's pretty much what the "is Heyman AS good as he and his supporters say he is?" arguments invariably boil down to: the good is ALWAYS because of him and the bad is ALWAYS in spite of him.

Thats bullshit........just an antigonist for the Heyman haters to voice the opposite viewpoint. Nothing more nothing less.

 

I don't think anyone here has said that his writing is borderline flawless, hell no writer in history has a perfect track record. But the stuff we've seen on Smackdown since mid 2002 should speak for itself.

[Guest Brian]

Aside from the matches, was there naything really that much more "can't miss" than RAW?

[Guest RedJed]

Backstage segments were kept to a minimum compared to Raw......most in ring promos weren't formulmatic and actually had purpose........

[Guest Brian]

They had experimented with that pre-split, trying to do more backstage promos with RAW and more in-ring with SmackDown.

 

I can't think of a whole lot of good promos that had a purpose. Maybe Knoble and Benoit.

[Guest The Hamburglar]

The difference between the two shows is all down to the workers, nothing more, nothing less. Raw's roster is utterly shite, Smackdown's is fantastic. Some of Heyman's stuff has been woeful. Him placing himself in an on-screen role as manager of all the major heels on Smackdown is pathetic, and if you think he had nothing to do with the Al Wilson stuff you must be smoking crack. He managed to take the awesome tag matches of the autumn and use them to absolutely no good effect. Rey and Edge stalled completely, and Benoit has had no direction since the Rumble. The booking of the Brock-Angle feud has been stupid, moreso when you take into the consideration that Brock is well capable of selling a good beatdown and participating in a decent feud, yet is being allowed no lee-way whatsoever to do so. Heyman did jack-shit with Jamie Noble, Tajiri and the rest of the cruiserweights, preferring instead to jack off to his clapped-out ECW fantasies like restoring the shitty FBI. Good riddance to Heyman I say, let's see if this new guy can apply some direction to these geat workers.

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

Hey dude , lay off the caffeine, it's only someone's opinion,BY GAWD!!lol.

Keep in mind that you're telling me this AFTER I was told that if I couldn't recognize Heyman's great work then I'm in the wrong forum. Yup.

 

Thats bullshit........just an antigonist for the Heyman haters to voice the opposite viewpoint. Nothing more nothing less.

 

I don't think anyone here has said that his writing is borderline flawless, hell no writer in history has a perfect track record. But the stuff we've seen on Smackdown since mid 2002 should speak for itself.

 

Then when has Heyman's work ever been critiqued objectively without one of his trained seals intervening saying the same old stuff? It doesn't happen. It doesn't get brought up quite enough that the SD 6 feud had a poor payoff that wasn't hyped up to any extent. One can say that the Guerreros won but was that ever utilized in a constructive fashion? Nope. You say that the stuff speaks for itself but the "good", like Hamburglar just said, mostly came from the workers that could do it in their sleep. And there has been quite a bit of "bad", and the blame ALWAYS gets put on someone else. Now why is that? Please tell me, because I really want to know.

[Guest THE MIGHTY THOR]

Hey dude , lay off the caffeine, it's only someone's opinion,BY GAWD!!lol.

Keep in mind that you're telling me this AFTER I was told that if I couldn't recognize Heyman's great work then I'm in the wrong forum. Yup.

 

Thats bullshit........just an antigonist for the Heyman haters to voice the opposite viewpoint. Nothing more nothing less.

 

I don't think anyone here has said that his writing is borderline flawless, hell no writer in history has a perfect track record. But the stuff we've seen on Smackdown since mid 2002 should speak for itself.

 

Then when has Heyman's work ever been critiqued objectively without one of his trained seals intervening saying the same old stuff? It doesn't happen. It doesn't get brought up quite enough that the SD 6 feud had a poor payoff that wasn't hyped up to any extent. One can say that the Guerreros won but was that ever utilized in a constructive fashion? Nope. You say that the stuff speaks for itself but the "good", like Hamburglar just said, mostly came from the workers that could do it in their sleep. And there has been quite a bit of "bad", and the blame ALWAYS gets put on someone else. Now why is that? Please tell me, because I really want to know.

I didn't say anything about you being in the wrong forum, that shows me how wired you are.

[Guest Mulatto Heat]

Nowhere did I say that it was you that made the comment, just that the comment was made. Thanks.

 

Nothing to say about my second paragraph?

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

If you've ever read JDW's work your opinions would change. Go the wrestling classics board and take a gander around the WON info section. You learn good now, ya'hear?

[Guest Brian]

If you've ever read JDW's work your opinions would change. Go the wrestling classics board and take a gander around the WON info section. You learn good now, ya'hear?

Agreed.

 

But it's not even that that that got me to this point. I used to defend Heyman alot too. But you just have to step back ant take an unbiased look at things.

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

I am a heyman-mark, i'll admit it. I loved ECW. But it's funny how Heyman's hands are clean of everything bad, but he is knees deep in everything that is good.

 

If you listen to the law, Jeff Marek has a huge hard-on for Paul. "Oh no, Paul wouldn't do that. That's not his style" is something that is often said on the show.

 

Lesbians aren't his style? Ya sure?

 

With the Al Wilson storyline they (Lovranski and Marek) were saying "well, paul is just doing something that is so bad that it's funny" but when it escalated into the Torrie Wilson/Dawn Marie sex video Heyman magically wasn't associated with it. "Oh no, that's not his style - heyman is all about the wrestling."

[Guest creativename]

No one's saying Heyman is perfect, obviously we all know that he's not even close to it. It's just that all the facts we know point to Heyman being in a completely different league in terms of writing ability than everyone else on the booking team. We also know that Pritchard is a failure. Lagana we can give the benefit of the doubt to, but Pritchard has no business being given the job over Heyman.

 

As for there being something wrong with Heyman's tactlessness--most of us would probably be the same way. This is clearly a business that he truly loves and has devoted his life too; if he sees it being compromised by a bunch of poor decisions, then no doubt he's going to get emotional about that. In a professional environment, he would not be punished for this, because tensions often run high in high-pressure business atmospheres; professionals learn to deal with that. It's a non-issue, unless someone starts throwing frivolous insults at others (which I highly doubt Heyman did).

[Guest The Hamburglar]

We also know that Pritchard is a failure.

As opposed to Paul "ECW went bankrupt and Smackdown/WWE ratings fell while I was writing" Heyman? Give me a break, at least now we might get some closure to some storylines. Come to think of it, how many feuds had definitive, half-way effective ending points on Smackdown in the past 10 months? At the rate Heyman was going, Brock-Angle wouldn't have even had any kind of result at Wrestlemania. Look at the SD6 tags, no closure to that at all.