The idea was floated out there to Brian. He opted to write a book instead.
On Tuesday, August 16th, Senior Vice President of Television at Seven Bucks Productions and former WWE writer Brian Gewirtz is releasing a book about his journey through WWE.
When his full-time run with the company ended, he was still onboard as a consultant for the writing team. Gewirtz would show up backstage on occasion throughout the years and he was also featured in WWE’s Ruthless Aggression series.
While chatting with Ariel Helwani, Gewirtz shared that in March of 2020, WWE approached him about the idea of doing a Network series with Bruce Prichard, during which they would dive into the decade of 2000 to 2010 in WWE. Gewirtz said doing a scheduled sit-down was not in his wheelhouse, so he went to Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Dany Garcia about the idea of writing a book.
Next thing you know, WWE is calling, not to say, what are you doing going on podcasts? But saying, ‘Hey, those were good podcasts. Do you mind coming in and being the talking head on the Ruthless Aggression series?’ So I was like, ‘Okay.’ That’s another thing I could do, sure and I did that and you know, at one point, this was during the pandemic, I was talking to some people at WWE Network and they were talking about like, ‘Maybe is there a Zoom series that you and Bruce Prichard could do together to talk about that era from like 2000 to 2010, beyond?’ And I was like, ‘You know, that could be fun but, it’s not really me’ and I was talking to Dwayne [‘The Rock’ Johnson] and Dany Garcia about it too. It’s not really my bag. I’m much more comfortable just writing than doing something so regular, permanent as like, you know, going on, talking to Bruce and that kind of thing so I approached them about the idea of like, what if? And again, this is March of 2020 where there was no sports on TV, everyone was basically staying home anyway, especially on the weekends and stuff like that so it seemed like an opportune time. Like what if I tried this? What the hell? What do I have to lose? And they were very supportive, Dwayne and Dany were and that’s like anything. If you want something to be successful, you just really, truly, no matter how hard it gets, just have to commit to it.
Vince McMahon is no longer Chairman and CEO of WWE, as he resigned amidst the sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Gewirtz was asked to share his initial reaction when he discovered that McMahon was no longer leading the charge for WWE.
It’s very surreal obviously to be entrenched so deep into a company and a culture and individuals and then, you know, all of sudden, you’re just not there anymore and believe it or not, it feels like I just left Washington DC. Washington D.C. was my first show and it was also my last show in July of 2015 but now we’re talking like seven years have gone by which is a lot, it’s a long time. So it definitely is kind of like you’re taking almost a step out of — out of body experience and it doesn’t really — it seems very surreal to read and see that happen [Vince McMahon no longer being CEO of WWE] and obviously I can’t speak to anyone’s experience other than my own, but it was surprising but it also was, for me, from just the creative writer mindset of the WWE creative team, I was like, this is going to be really, really interesting now in terms of where the shows go from here and the direction of the show and the idea of certain things that were verboten or not really allowed or what have you in the past, seeing those things maybe come to light now or seeing a different style and a different way of storytelling because sometimes you get so in the bubble and so tunnel vision in one specific way of doing things that when a new, essentially head writer, head of creative is installed, it can’t help but be interesting and the key is to sustain it but I’ve always said, you know, WWE and Vince himself has kind of instilled this sense of if someone goes down, basically no person is greater than the company.
Gewirtz is making the media rounds to promote the book and during a recent interview, he told the story of when he and Paul Heyman got suspended from WWE following a slap fight. To read Brian’s recount of what occurred, head over to this link.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Ariel Helwani with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
