MORE ON HEYMAN AND BISCHOFF'S NEW WWE ROLES

The announcement today that Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff have signed on with WWE to become Executive Directors of the Raw and Smackdown brands is a legitimate announcement, not a storyline situation.

WWE has been pursuing Heyman to come on board officially in their corporate circles as far back as February, PWInsider.com can exclusively confirm. An offer was issued to Heyman to come on board full-time as a top member of the creative team around the same time Bruce Prichard was brought back as a Senior Vice President but the conversations were slow in progressing. Heyman had been working on certain storylines and with certain talents, including Ronda Rousey, Brock Lesnar, Alexa Bliss and many others dating back far before that point. He's been in the inner circle when it comes to the creative process for some time without an official title. He and WWE have been circling around this deal for a long time and finally came to terms recently.

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The Eric Bischoff deal came together within the last several weeks. Bischoff has been working on pre-production of the planned Netflix Hulk Hogan biography film and had a slew of personal appearances booked. Over the last week, he quietly began canceling those appearance dates, so that is likely when he came to official terms with WWE. We are told he will be working directly with FOX as WWE builds their relationship with Smackdown's new home. To say this is a massive return to form for Bischoff is a grand understatement. We are told that WWE approached him about the role and that his previous work in collaborating with Turner Broadcasting. Spike and other networks in building past TV series was one of the reasons Bischoff was pitched for the position.

We are told that they will be overseeing all aspects of their individual series, answering directly to Vince McMahon. They are now the top of the pyramid, respectively, for Raw and Smackdown but obviously McMahon will always have the last say. One WWE source compared their roles to Paul Levesque's in NXT in that they will be in charge, but it's still Vince's company.

Heyman is expected to continue his role as Brock Lesnar's advocate.

There is no word yet whether Bischoff will appear on camera, but given how good of a performer he is, one would think it's just a matter of time.

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