"By Wade Keller, Torch editor Feb 23, 2003, 7:44 pm
Wrestlers were officially told backstage tonight at the PPV that Paul Heyman is no longer lead writer for Smackdown. Bruce Prichard and Dave Lagana (a former close ally of Heyman who was attending ECW Arena events as a fan just a few years ago) have taken over. Prichard has been a TV formatter off and on in WWE for many years.
Heyman is now being referred to as a "consultant to both Raw and Smackdown," but everyone views the move as the result of Kevin Dunn and his allies winning a powerplay over Heyman, whose philosophies differed greatly from each other.
Heyman had been the lead Smackdown writer for most of 2002. "
...urge to kill, rising.
"If my ass was a football, would you kick it?" - Norman Darter
Eh. I was never one of the "Everything good on Smackdown is because of Heyman (and the bad stuff is obviously Stephanie's fault)" crowd. Unless the Lagana/Pritchard team immediately starts jobbing Benoit and Angle to the Big Show and A-Train, I'm willing to give them a chance.
"next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn's early my country tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
I want to give them a chance too, especially since the new head writer was a fan just like us. But it seems they waiting until they could get thier hands on that ECW library, and then giving Heyman the shaft. Maybe Raw will be better now since he is consulting both shows....I dunno.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I can see what Kevin Dunn said "Hey- let's get rid of the head writer from our most praised show and replace him with an ECW fan and Brother Love!" I just don't get it.
That sucks, I wish this meant that Paul was actually the head writer for both shows. Kind of like the Assistant to Vince who has to approve everything before it gets on air for both shows. But that isn't going happen, we all know.
January 4th 1999 - The day WCW injected itself with 10 gallons of Liquid Anthrax...AKA...The day Hogan "Defeated" Nash to win the WCW title in front of 40,000.
is this a realiable source? if it is, that is total crap. I think everyone realizes how much better smackdown been than raw since the split, so this makes no sense. I am just praying the explanation for this is they want heyman to help raw as well as smackdown, so that both shows will have more quality. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
I can just imagine these meetings at Titan Towers.
Kevin Dunn: Wow, ratings are down pretty bad. What should we do?
McMahon: Hmmm. Well, if ratings are down, it's probably the writer's fault. That Paul Heyman obviously doesn't know what he is doing. You know he wanted to give Matt Hardy a push, and keep Albert on Velocity?
Dunn: What an idiot. Do you hear those 'Shave your back' chants. Albert is fucking OVER!
JR: He's a hoss, y'know?
McMahon: Then it's settled. Heyman is out.
Dunn: RAW is down too. What should we do there?
Michael Hayes: Maybe we should get rid of Gerwirtz?
Dunn: No fucking way. The guy's a genius. HLA, necrophilia. His ideas are endless.
McMahon: Maybe there isn't enough Triple H on TV. Lets give him more air time.
Dunn: Brilliant. Lets also work Shane and Stephanie on the show.
McMahon: McMahons equal ratings DAMMIT!!!
There all fucking idiots.
You thought watching Thunder was bad? Raw is like watching Thunder in re-runs.
If this IS a power play on the part of Kevin Dunn, this is the single WORST power play EVER.
Why? Because now Heyman has influence on both RAW and Smackdown, both from his "consultant" position and from the fact that he has two friends in fairly good position on the booking staffs (Dreamer on RAW, Lagana on Smackdown, though "former ally" may hold alot of negative conotations). Add to that that he's an on screen character and part of several different on screen angles, and you're telling me that this is a major coup for the opponents of Heyman's booking? Eh. I'm not buying it.
Then again, I'm just as inclined to believe that we have Paul Heyman to thank for the Al Wilson saga as much as we do anything else on WWE TV.
RAW Satire 2/17 Buffy 7.15 gets a 8 The Kennedy tweener turn happened out of nowhere, but whatever. Mostly good stuff though.
So stupid, WWE's demise has just got to be written in the stars or something as they seem to make all the wrong decisions. I guess thats what you get for making the number 2 show a number 1 show. Damn stupid!
Apparently being a "Creative Consultant" is just a phony position. Jim Barnett is a creative consultant and he sits at home and never gets called. Vince Russo was brought in earlier as a creative consultant and lasted a day.
Originally posted by fuelinjectedApparently being a "Creative Consultant" is just a phony position. Jim Barnett is a creative consultant and he sits at home and never gets called. Vince Russo was brought in earlier as a creative consultant and lasted a day.
Of course the difference is Paul E. will actually be backstage (he's still is an onscreen character).
RAW Satire 2/17 Buffy 7.15 gets a 8 The Kennedy tweener turn happened out of nowhere, but whatever. Mostly good stuff though.
Yeah, but for how long? Kurt Angle comes out and says "We lost the match because we had an idiot for a leader! So we fired him!" and after that, Paul can take his spot with D'Lo.
Of course, I personally believe Heyman will stay on TV, but I couldn't resist throwing some fuel on the fire.
Tribal Prophet
Wrestling exists in the eternal present. What is, has always been, and when it no longer is, it never was. It has no past and no future, and sometimes even today is in question. - Madame Manga
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Try typing "kevin sullivan k" into Google (with autocomplete on) and prepare to be disappointed. Also, kind of weird that the link goes to a comment thread: http://deadspin.com/dead-wrestler-of-the-week-chris-benoit-1468485429