Reason Behind Major WWE SmackDown Change

The reason behind a recent WWE reshuffle has been revealed.

It was recently reported that Road Dogg Brian James is now co-lead writer of SmackDown alongside John Swikata. However, the news was met with a somewhat mixed reception from fans who didn’t remember his previous run in the role back in 2017 too fondly.

The WWE Hall of Famer began working backstage as a producer in 2011, before coaching in NXT and eventually becoming a member of the SmackDown writing team. He later became head writer for the brand but stepped down in 2019. Despite this, he continued to work for the company until being released in January 2022.

However, his absence wasn’t a long one and James was back in the fold by August, replacing Jeff Jarrett as Senior Vice President of Live Events

High Work Load Caused WWE Change

Reporting in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer said Road Dogg had been moved into his new role because there’s too much work for just one person. There are now two head writers on Raw and SmackDown with Bruce Prichard acting as something of a middleman between the writers and Triple H.

We were told that there is so much going on right now, that one lead writer on the show wasn’t enough. Raw has Ryan Ward and Jon Baeckstrom. Ed Koskey is there overseeing and editing the scripts, Bruce Prichard is the buffer between them and Paul Levesque.

During a recent interview, Road Dogg opened up about his sometimes complicated relationship with CM Punk. The veteran said he and Punk are on good terms even though he thought the pair actually hated each other for several years.

In the past the pair have “butted heads,” and James publicly criticised Punk during his time with AEW.