9 Ups & 4 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (18 Oct)
SmackDown begins life under Bruce Prichard, but ends the episode exactly where it started...
Another turbulent week in WWE saw SmackDown back at the front of the headlines for a significant change at the top.
Eric Bischoff - for reasons that appear both entirely his fault and entirely not - was let go from his role as Executive Director mere months into assuming the position. 'Easy E' took the hardest fall after the blue brand's ratings tumbled between weeks one and two, but even casual dorks like all of us predicted that slide - the maiden edition of SmackDown on Fox was music festival-sized WWE with all the headline acts knocking out the hits for a crowd trapped entirely in the moment rather than the actual investment still required by the company.
The following week's Draft, by comparison anyway, was a field strewn with empty paper cups in the coldest possible light of day. The hacked-down Bayley Buddies even looked like abandoned tents. It's a lesson WWE haven't learned from similar ratings-grabbing stunts on Monday Night Raw over the last few years, but perhaps they'd rather bounce from panic station to panic station as long as Fox don't touch that billion dollar deal?
Bruce Prichard found himself as the next (last?) wise (maybe?) old (definitely) head to assume this challenging role. But just how did his first night on the job go?