5 Reasons why Paul Heyman was removed as Executive Director of WWE RAW
WWE made a surprising announcement where they revealed that Paul Heyman will no longer be the Executive Director of RAW going forward. Bruce Prichard, who performs the same role on SmackDown, will take over the role on RAW as well.
Heyman and Eric Bischoff were assigned these new roles last year, but both have now been replaced by Prichard on RAW and SmackDown respectively. WWE revealed that this decision was made to "streamline our creative writing process for television". They said in their statement that Heyman will now purely be an "in-ring performer".
What could be the reason for Heyman getting the sack? Let's take a look at 5 reasons why Paul Heyman was removed as Executive Director of WWE RAW:
#5 To send a message to shareholders
It's tough for WWE to garner strong viewership figures during this pandemic, but RAW - which is supposed to be WWE's marquee brand - has struggled quite a bit over the last two months.
The Red brand's viewership figures have slid consistently, with this past week's viewership ratings at just 1.737 million viewers. This is quite an alarming drop since the start of the year. SmackDown has done a lot better, despite last week's viewership ratings seeing a bit of a slide at 1.984 million viewers.
With WWE being a publicly-traded company, Vince McMahon and co. must have been alarmed at the dip in viewership for RAW over the last few weeks, which has prompted the decision to remove Paul Heyman from his role on RAW.
Assigning a new person as Executive Director could be a way to give confidence to shareholders, and show them that WWE as a company is doing everything in their power to change the fortunes of the Red brand.