Brian Gewirtz removed from Creative

[Strummer]

Vince is on a rampage after last week's rating. He also threatened all the production team that if he doesn't see results they'll all be fired. Gewirtz cannot be outright fired per his contract. He'd have to be bought out.

 

Things are getting interesting. A real WCW vibe .

 

also on RAW Punk seemed to have punched out a fan while escaping through the crowd. Right in front of Vince

[cm funk]

As soon as I saw last week's rating I thought, "Vince will be back on TV" and sure enough....

 

I liked the angle. It should help prop up their ratings for a week, and it played into the Punk/Cena/Ryback stuff. Punk has been fantastic lately, but I thought tonight may have been his best performance yet.

 

I'm honestly surprised it took this long for Vince to go with a new head writer. With all the various downturns and generally downtrending ratings he managed to survive for a really long time.

 

Sure there's going to be a lot of interesting backstage gossip coming out in the next few weeks

[sek69]

Considering Dave (and others) have pointed out many times that 5 years seems to be the max anyone can book a major company before burning out, it is amazing he lasted this long.

 

I have to wonder if this will do anything to the "write everything to please Vince" mindset that leads to all the bad comedy that bombs nearly every time.

[El-P]

They should bring back Cornette.

[sek69]

The most fascinating thing of all this was it coming out just how toxic and dysfunctional the organization of the creative team is under Stephanie. Having a "home team" who seem to only exist to write drafts to get thrown in the trash by the team who travels on the road is pretty much the epitome of the last few years of WWE.

[kjh]

I have a column about this at Cageside Seats - Brian Gerwirtz: Absence does not make Vince McMahon's heart grow fonder.

 

But the toxic and dysfunctional nature of the creative team has been known for years, every past WWE writer who ever had a beef with her have let that be known in numerous podcasts, that's nothing new. I'm sure the idea behind the "home vs. away" teams was to make the creative process more efficient, but given the highly political nature of WWE, it was inevitable that the people working from the comfort of their abodes would lose out to the team who was at every taping, due to the inevitable backstabbing by the writers who had more of Vince/Stephanie/Triple H's ears in person, branding the "home" team as arrogant slackers. Really, given the fact that Stephanie is working less now due to raising her kids, I'm not sure you can place the blame wholly on her shoulders, though she did set up the environment where such infighting could flourish.