Black Widow
04-16-2008, 07:39 PM
To follow up what we reported here yesterday (and what you saw on TV last night), Joey Styles has been moved out of the ECW announcing booth and into a position with WWE.com. From what I have been told, the decision was pretty quick in developing last Friday and it took most of the people in the company by surprise when it all went down yesterday.
While they announced on TV that Styles will be the "Head of WWE.com", the site will still be overseen by Brian Kalinowski, who is a VP in charge of a number of areas, including the website. Styles will be a point man for the site, kind of a managing editor of sorts, taking a role similar to the one that Michael Cole had before giving up site responsibility earlier this year. Styles will be in charge of all of the content that you see on WWE.com from this point forward.
Styles will both work in the WWE.com offices in Stamford and will also travel to all of the company's televised WWE events. He was telling people at TV yesterday that his role will be to tighten up the website and make sure that embarrassing situations, such as the posting of photographs on Monday of people who may or may not be in next week's King Of The Ring tournament on Raw, no longer happen. At the live events, he will sit in on production and creative meetings and thus will be able to convey to those on the website what should be reported, who should be pushed, etc. Styles will be in the loop in a big way and his new role is one that actually adds greatly to his responsibilities within the company.
In talking to people inside WWE, the consensus was that Styles was telling people that he was excited about the new role and looked forward to the challenge and showing another area of his abilities to WWE. Of course, he co-owned both ECWWrestling.com and 1Wrestling.com, where yours truly worked closely with him, so he has a lot of experience in the area of new media. Unfortunately, with the addition of Mike Adamle's hefty contract that probably made the company's decision to move Styles out of the announce booth for them.
As for why he was moved off of the show, I have heard a few different theories. It's no secret that Vince McMahon has never been a fan of Joey's style, which is understandable considering that Styles' strengths lie in areas that WWE does not emphasize. But of late, there hadn't been much of talk of any problem that McMahon had with the work being done on Tuesday nights. Still, given Styles initial problems meshing with Vince McMahon's view of the business, his removal from the booth doesn't surprise me. As mentioned above, there is also the matter of Mike Adamle and his big contract to consider. He wasn't brought in to be a sideline reporter and given his inexperience calling matches, ECW was the best logical place to let him cut his teeth.
Curiously enough, a number of people in the company told me that Styles stock went up given Adamle's less than stellar debut last night. Of course, that has to be tempered by the fact that the people doing the evaluating think that the Coach/Michael Cole combination on Smackdown is working well.
PWInsider.com
While they announced on TV that Styles will be the "Head of WWE.com", the site will still be overseen by Brian Kalinowski, who is a VP in charge of a number of areas, including the website. Styles will be a point man for the site, kind of a managing editor of sorts, taking a role similar to the one that Michael Cole had before giving up site responsibility earlier this year. Styles will be in charge of all of the content that you see on WWE.com from this point forward.
Styles will both work in the WWE.com offices in Stamford and will also travel to all of the company's televised WWE events. He was telling people at TV yesterday that his role will be to tighten up the website and make sure that embarrassing situations, such as the posting of photographs on Monday of people who may or may not be in next week's King Of The Ring tournament on Raw, no longer happen. At the live events, he will sit in on production and creative meetings and thus will be able to convey to those on the website what should be reported, who should be pushed, etc. Styles will be in the loop in a big way and his new role is one that actually adds greatly to his responsibilities within the company.
In talking to people inside WWE, the consensus was that Styles was telling people that he was excited about the new role and looked forward to the challenge and showing another area of his abilities to WWE. Of course, he co-owned both ECWWrestling.com and 1Wrestling.com, where yours truly worked closely with him, so he has a lot of experience in the area of new media. Unfortunately, with the addition of Mike Adamle's hefty contract that probably made the company's decision to move Styles out of the announce booth for them.
As for why he was moved off of the show, I have heard a few different theories. It's no secret that Vince McMahon has never been a fan of Joey's style, which is understandable considering that Styles' strengths lie in areas that WWE does not emphasize. But of late, there hadn't been much of talk of any problem that McMahon had with the work being done on Tuesday nights. Still, given Styles initial problems meshing with Vince McMahon's view of the business, his removal from the booth doesn't surprise me. As mentioned above, there is also the matter of Mike Adamle and his big contract to consider. He wasn't brought in to be a sideline reporter and given his inexperience calling matches, ECW was the best logical place to let him cut his teeth.
Curiously enough, a number of people in the company told me that Styles stock went up given Adamle's less than stellar debut last night. Of course, that has to be tempered by the fact that the people doing the evaluating think that the Coach/Michael Cole combination on Smackdown is working well.
PWInsider.com