Eric Bischoff gives his thoughts on recent comments from Paul Heyman regarding the Bloodline's storyline.
During the WWE SummerSlam post-show media conference, Paul Heyman got fans talking once again, as he noted that the storyline with The Bloodline and Roman Reigns is still in the bottom of the third inning. Four months before that, Heyman noted the exact same thing during the WrestleMania post-show media conference, seemingly giving the hint that the storyline is moving at a slow pace.
On the latest episode of the Strictly Business podcast, Eric Bischoff talked about Heyman's line and said that if the story is truly in the bottom of the third inning, then they can still win the proverbial game, even after a heavily criticized closing angle at WWE SummerSlam.
“To me, there’s nobody more creatively right now than Paul Heyman. But if we’re in the bottom of the third, let’s go from a baseball analogy to a traditional storytelling analogy. If you’re in the middle of act two, which I guess is as close as I can get to equating the bottom of third, if you’re early in the story, as the third inning would represent in a baseball game, you’re still in the early phases of that game, or in this case, story, you’ve got to advance the story. You’ve got to advance it in a way that it’s escalating, it’s building. That’s why they call it an arc. So Paul’s analogy of being in the bottom of the third inning would suggest that he’s just now closing up the first act. If that’s true, oh my gosh, these people should be winning Emmys at some point because they’ve done such a phenomenal job. To suggest that you can’t strike out in the bottom of the third or you can’t hit a pop-up fly in the bottom of the third, or you can’t commit an error in the bottom of the third, and still win the game and win the World Series, let’s not get too confused about where we’re at and concerned about whether or not they can continue. I think the creative team has demonstrated, without question, that they have the ability and the understanding. Perhaps they just committed an error because perhaps they couldn’t really think a finish to this that was more dramatic, or maybe they just put all of their eggs in the Jimmy turn, assuming that that would be the moment, the dramatic moment in the match, which it could have been and arguably should have been. It just wasn’t. It could have been the way it was executed. Perhaps, hindsight 20/20, everybody’s got it. Doesn’t take a half an ounce of experience or talent or creativity to criticize something after the fact."
Bischoff went on to note that the people in the company likely agreed with some of the criticisms surrounding the finish of the SummerSlam premium live event, before also reiterating that it is okay to make a mistake as this stage in the proverbial game, as they have many innings left to go.
"But perhaps as they analyze, and I’m sure they are, and discussing, ‘Okay, that really wasn’t what we hoped it would be, or could be. Perhaps they’re looking at the execution of the turn and going, ‘We could have done that better. We could have done that differently.’ I’m sure they’re going back and they’re analyzing, even while it was happening. There’s a lot of very, very, very experienced, talented creative people back there watching in gorilla. I would not be surprised if back in gorilla they were watching along with everybody else going, ‘That was kind of flat.’ No big deal. An error in the bottom of the third. Or at the end of the first act, as the case may be. There’s another inning coming up. Let’s get the team together, let’s focus, and let’s move on. Bump in the road? I don’t even know if it was a bump. They ran over an empty can, made a little noise. Let’s move on. I’m still very, very optimistic. But I was let down. I thought that match to me was the least interesting and compelling thing on the entire card. I thought everything else on that card was better than that."
Elsewhere in the podcast, Bischoff predicted that NXT will out perform AEW Dynamite in the ratings in coming months. Fans can learn more by clicking here.
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