The news broke on Thursday that Paul Heyman is no longer the head of the RAW creative team. WWE announced that both the RAW and Smackdown teams will now be lead by Bruce Prichard. Heyman will remain with WWE but as an on-screen talent.
According to a report from WrestlingNews.co, Heyman was fired and he did not step down.
The site says that Vince McMahon has expressed frustration with how much the RAW ratings have slipped over the past few months. It also says that Vince is more hands-on with RAW, which made Heyman’s job more difficult. Here is an excerpt from the site:
Another source told me that McMahon is more involved with Raw than SmackDown and that made Heyman’s job much harder as he had to try to push his ideas while trying to keep McMahon happy.
Meanwhile, Bruce Prichard on SmackDown is said to be more in line with what McMahon wants. The evidence of this is the Jeff Hardy angle. It was reported on Wednesday by Sportskeeda that Friday’s SmackDown will include a controversial segment that is basically a rehash of something they did in 2006 with Shawn Michaels. McMahon was very hands on with the 2006 angle that is being redone this week with Hardy. What they are doing with Hardy is more in line with what McMahon wants while Heyman has been pushing to get more younger talent moved up the card.
Vince also disagreed with several of the names that Heyman wanted to push on RAW:
Over the last several months, Heyman has attempted to give pushes to names like Ricochet, Cedric Alexander, and others only to have McMahon step in after a few weeks with the edict given to bury them because he doesn’t seem them as top stars.
UPDATE: Mike Johnson of PWinsider echoes a similar point that Vince has been frustrated with RAW as of late:
The decision, obviously, was a Vince McMahon call. One source noted that Vince McMahon had been “very upset” and openly “frustrated” with Monday Night Raw of late. That series has taken the hardest hit in terms of viewership during the COVID-19 pandemic.
UPDATE #2: @Wrestlevotes added the following about Heyman’s exit:
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