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In perfectly timed news, given Vice Sports' "Breaking Kayfabe" article yesterday that laid bare the difficulties of working underneath WWE owner Vince McMahon, he has recently shaken up his creative team by firing WWE's Managing Lead Writer, Tom Casiello.
Casiello was an Emmy-Award winning writer and producer, who had worked on several popular soap operas like As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives, One Life to Live and The Young and the Restless before being hired by WWE as a creative team member in April 2011. He had stints as the lead writer for NXT Redemption and WWE Main Event before leaving the company in September 2014, only to return late last year in a more senior position where he was responsible for overseeing the writing teams for all wrestling shows produced by the company.
The reasons behind his firing are currently unknown, but it probably follows the pattern suggested by Vice Sports that Vince McMahon quickly tires of outsiders questioning his creative vision:
"First, you're the second coming of Christ and Vince loves you. Then, over time, he decides you are a moron and he can't get wait to get rid of you. It's a slow, painful death. I don't know if he's so smart and savvy and he just enjoys the sport of doing that, or if that is unconscious, but it has happened so many times. It really damages people, what they experience there."
As a former WWE executive told Vice Sports, instead of cultivating a healthy creative environment where new ideas are encouraged and allowed to flourish, Vince craves conformity, is stuck in his ways and doesn't tolerate defiance well:
"He takes great lip service to wanting new ideas, but he doesn't value or respect outside opinion. It's his way or no way. Vince's philosophy, which is hysterical, is 'Every day is your first day on the job.' That's not a philosophy to run a company, but a rationalization for Vince to change his mind whenever he wants."
Indeed, Casiello was reportedly "very influential" in the recent push of the women's divisions on Raw and Smackdown, and thus, it is very likely he butted heads with the more conservative forces within the company like Vince McMahon himself and his right-hand man Kevin Dunn.
My personal opinion is that any decision that reduces the diversity of voices on the WWE creative team is a bad move and this seems like a backwards step for the company.