Eric Bischoff On If Paul Heyman Actually Has Creative Control of RAW, Explains What Heyman’s Main Strength Is

On the latest edition of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff discussed how from his brief time in WWE last year, he can say that Paul Heyman does not have creative control of RAW and that Vince McMahon remains fully in charge of creative. He also insinuated that he cannot provide specific details on his time in WWE due to an agreement he has with WWE. Highlights are below.

On how much creative control Paul Heyman has in WWE: “There is one guy who has creative control, it’s not Paul Heyman, I hate to break your bubble, and I love Paul, by the way. Conrad, you and I talked about Paul a little bit when I visited you last week, and I shared with you how highly I regard Paul’s creative abilities and things like that, so this is not meant to be an half assed attempt to take a shot or anything like that, but Paul Heyman doesn’t have creative control, anybody who thinks he does is kidding themselves. I know Paul doesn’t. And neither does anybody else. One guy has creative control, and we all know who that is. So when I said, while I was there, I didn’t have creative control, I was being honest, I didn’t. Because one man did. Paul Heyman doesn’t. Eric Bischoff didn’t. Nobody who follows in either my footsteps, including Bruce Prichard, and you know how much I love Bruce, or Paul Heyman, have creative control. People use that term or phrase, creative control, very, very loosely and very broadly, and they don’t really have context, let’s put it that way, as it relates to what goes on in WWE.”

On what his job with Smackdown actually entailed: “It was the same job as Paul Heyman’s. Again, I think this is pretty much public knowledge, I’m not giving away too much here, I’m going to be general, intentionally general, so as not to violate any just personal trust or contractual obligations, but essentially, both Paul and I, I’ll speak for myself, I oversaw just about everything that touched the Smackdown product, including creative, I oversaw the creative team, in terms of managing it, in terms of staffing it, in terms of making sure things got done when it needed to get done, and presented to the one person who did have creative control, as well as a lot of the things that are kind of the business to business side of wrestling, licensing and merchandising, and PR, and anything that had anything to do with Smackdown, I was directly involved in. So, it was a very big, very broad job, broad meaning it wasn’t just focused on the creative certainly, that was a big part of it, don’t let me confuse anybody here by minimizing it, but there were also a lot of other aspects of it.”

On Paul Heyman’s main strength: “I think Paul’s strongest suit, and this is just my opinion, is really with his ability to build and see and add depth to a character. I think that’s probably much more of a strength in my opinion, just my opinion, of Paul’s then his ability to arc a story, for example. I think, I’ll just speak for myself about myself, I think my strength is really my ability to see a beginning, and a middle, and an end in a way that is consistent and flows and builds and leads to a climactic moment at the end that is satisfying at the end of a story, not necessarily in building and adding depth to a character, that’s not my strength, it is Paul’s strength.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.