Eric Bischoff is now the executive director of WWE’s Smackdown! Live brand. He won’t be fully on the job and have his ideas implemented until after the Extreme Rules Pay Per View.
Fightful recently sat down with Eric Bischoff and spoke to him about what he would do if he were in charge or WWE’s competition. Eric said that you can’t compete with WWE but there are a few things you can do to change the presentation of the product.
When you talk about production values, you have to look at it for more than one perspective — whose graphics are cooler? Who has the better pyro? Those are obvious things. Going from taped to live had a far more significant impact on the wrestling industry than cool graphics. Even today, I love WWE’s product. Nobody can come close to producing them. For my tastes, it’s a little too glossy. It doesn’t feel live. There’s no sense of urgency. The feeling that anything can happen — that’s a big advantage of going live. You condition the audience to believe or to feel, even subconsciously, because it’s live it’s a little more dangerous because anything can happen. That’s something that drives viewership for wrestling, or at least it used to. I think by producing a show that’s too glossy, you almost forget that it’s live. That’s just my own take. That doesn’t mean I’m right, that’s just how I feel about it
Eric Bischoff
Time will tell if Eric’s vision of a less glossy product will come to fruition. We will know soon, as Extreme Rules is less than 14 days away.
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