Bruce Prichard has been announced as the Executive Director of Friday Night SmackDown, reporting directly to WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon. Prichard will oversee the creative development of Friday Night SmackDown on FOX and ensure integration across all platforms and lines of business, replacing Eric Bischoff.
Prichard brings nearly 40 years of experience in sports-entertainment with an extensive background in character development and creative storytelling. During his career, Prichard has served in a variety of roles, including announcer, producer, agent and on-screen personality. Earlier this year, Prichard returned to WWE as a member of the company’s creative team.
Last June, when WWE announced Paul Heyman was named Executive Director of Monday Night RAW and Eric Bischoff Executive Director of SmackDown Live, it was a huge surprise. If Paul Heyman was already involved backstage and as Brock Lesnar’s on-screen advocate, Eric Bischoff was coming back to WWE when no one was expecting it.
Since that announcement, when Eric Bischoff was taking the time to move his family from Wyoming to Connecticut to be near WWE HQ in Stamford, Paul Heyman has taken the helm of RAW and helped talents. He recently was in charge of one RAW episode, as Vince McMahon and Triple H were focused on NXT moving to USA Network.
While Heyman was instilling his style on RAW, we learnt that Eric Bischoff was seemingly not really the executive director of SmackDown but in charge of the relations between FOX and WWE. If there’s no word yet on what led to Bischoff’s departure, it had been made clear Bischoff was not being heavily involved with the SmackDown creative process.
Bruce is a great producer, good friend and I am certain he is going to thrive in his position. He’s going to be working with a great team of the most dedicated and hard working people I have had the pleasure of working with and getting to know. https://t.co/aMKk8d3Rx7
— Eric Bischoff (@EBischoff) October 15, 2019
And here came today’s announcement, Eric Bischoff has been replaced by Bruce Prichard as the SmackDown Executive Director. As a wrestling podcaster, booker, commentator, referee, ring announcer, manager, and producer, Bruce Prichard has been in the business for more than 30 years.
He became WWE Senior Vice President of WWE and a member of their creative team earlier this year. As a manager, Prichard performed under the ring name Brother Love and served as the original manager of The Undertaker. When not on WWE, Prichard also worked for TNA/GFW/Impact Wrestling and MLW.
Since 2016, Something To Wrestle With became a highly-rated podcast due to Bruce Prichard’s very brash and straight forward style discussing all things wrestling, including his time in WWE. Will he bring that same style to television? We’ll see that on Friday.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgpFwojVs08]
All pics and videos courtesy of WWE, feature image courtesy of Info Lutte