Eric Bischoff Says WWE Production Meetings Were A Waste Of Time

Eric Bischoff was brought back by WWE in 2019 to run SmackDown. The short stint only lasted a few months before Bruce Pritchard took over. While he was there, Eric got to experience what modern-day WWE production meetings are like.

On a recent visit with Renee Paquette on Oral Sessions, the former WCW boss gave his thoughts on the meetings. He said they were way too broad and complete wastes of time. Of course, he used much stronger language.

“My first visceral reaction was, ‘this is a f*cking waste of a lot of time.’ You do not need all of those people in one large meeting. When you’re going through a format, I don’t give a sh*t. I don’t need to know when a graphic is going to hit. The guys in the truck need to know that. They should have their own production meeting. To spend two hours going over that stuff where you really only needed an hour, tops, 45 minutes if you’re focused, to get through.

To tie up all of that staff, who are not doing other things that they could have actually been doing. We worked out all of that stuff during the week, before we got to TV. You sit through the two or three hour production meeting and while you’re sitting there starving because you haven’t had lunch and you’re watching Hunter [Triple H] and Vince (McMahon) piling down filet mignon and sushi while you’re sucking down warm coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

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I thought that was a real waste of time. Here’s the best part; everyone does get to eat lunch and they go off and start doing the things they are assigned to do at the end of the elongated luncheon for the McMahon family and then you find out….we’re tearing sh*t up and we’re going to start all over again at five o’clock. We’re not talking about, ‘let’s take this match and move it from segment three to segment six’ or ‘somebody got hurt and let’s rebook a match and figure out a way to explain it and make sense.’ It’s not that, it’s [ripping paper]. There were times like 15 minutes before the show and we’re re-writing scenes.”

Renee went on to discuss how the WWE television shows were often changed moments before the show started. Commentators would be left without knowing what they were going to talk about until the last minute. It’s all in a day’s work at WWE.

What do you think of Eric Bischoff’s take on WWE production meetings? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to Fightful for the transcription!