On his latest ’83 Weeks’ podcast, Eric Bischoff spoke about his short-lived stint at SmackDown Executive Director last year, having being released within 3 months of taking the WWE gig. He provided some interesting backstage insight, including the revelation that even as a top executive for the company, he didn’t have his own office.
“When you show up at an arena, and every arena is different, some are bigger than others, some have better accommodations than others, but when you show up for a production like RAW or Smackdown, a live production, with a crew and the moving and just the requirements of space that is needed when RAW or Smackdown show up, there are no offices. Eric Bischoff never had an office, by the way. When I would show up, even though I was the head of Smackdown, presumably, the head of Smackdown, careful how I say that, the head of Smackdown, and have a team of 10-12 writers working underneath me, I didn’t have an office.”
Bischoff further elaborated that any area in the building which got a signal would be assigned as the writer’s office, and they sometimes had to work out of rooms which were the size of a small kitchen.
“So you get up, get to the arena, you show up and look for the closest place you can find that you can sit with a laptop that gets a signal, and there would be a writers room, sometimes they were the size of a small kitchen, sometimes, at Madison Square Garden for example, they’re huge and there is plenty of room for everybody because you’re actually in the journalist or sportswriters room that you use, so there was at least room and space for everybody to kind of be in the same area, but more often than not, there was zero office space, zero work space available, you had to make due with whatever you could get.”
Bischoff was of course replaced by Bruce Prichard almost immediately following his release last year, and he is currently still in role.
