How Did Friday's WWE SmackDown Fare Without Vince McMahon?
In Vince McMahon's absence, who handled what duties on Friday.
As the fallout from Vince McMahon's shock retirement announcement continues, there's now word on who handled what duties backstage during SmackDown this past Friday.
Via Fightful Select, Bruce Prichard was leading creative, Ed Koskey was in a position of leadership, and Triple H helped to keep things ticking over.
In addition to this, Fightful noted how producers were told that Prichard would be taking over many of Vince McMahon's roles at television for the immediate future, although nothing permanent has been decided upon as of yet.
Following McMahon's retirement and Brock Lesnar walking out on SmackDown - before the Beast Incarnate obviously eventually returned later in the night - it was a chaotic scene backstage at WWE's latest blue brand outing. It was also said to be a "looser" show from a production standpoint, which is something that will seemingly be the approach moving forward.
As for ratings, SmackDown's numbers were up this week. Via SpoilerTV, the show averaged 2.166 million viewers on FOX, which is up on last week's ratings that came in just under 2 million. In terms of the key demographics, Smackers picked up a 0.6 rating.