Booker T just gave a pretty revealing look at how he believes WWE creative operates these days — and according to him, the Vince McMahon era of one guy sitting at the top and potentially changing everything at the last second is over. The WWE Hall of Famer made the comments while breaking down Sami Zayn’s latest WWE Championship win and whether WWE had the whole thing mapped out months in advance.
During the Hall of Fame podcast, Booker and Brad Gilmore were discussing Zayn defeating CM Punk for the WWE Championship on September 11. As Ringside News previously covered, Zayn recaptured the WWE Championship after a chaotic finish involving Candice LeRae, Johnny Gargano and Kevin Owens.
Gilmore brought up the reaction to Zayn’s previous title loss, noting that plenty of fans immediately assumed WWE had simply used him as a transitional champion. With Zayn now back on top, Gilmore wondered whether WWE had been playing the long game the entire time. Booker wasn’t willing to go that far. He said sometimes wrestling really is as simple as somebody coming up with an idea at the right moment and everyone deciding to run with it.
“You know, I don’t know if it was a long-term plan or not, but sometimes plans change. You know, it’s—that’s like here. You know what I mean? We write stuff out and then, you know, like Hank and Tank. Yeah, you know, they came in to work a match, you know, last month and they won the titles, you know, because we thought, ‘Hey, tonight is the right time.’ It just feels right. Let’s pull the trigger on this. Let’s do this. Somebody might have came with an idea and somebody said, ‘Yeah, let’s do that.’”
That’s when Booker got into the bigger WWE creative picture and directly compared the current system to what happened under Vince McMahon. According to Booker, WWE used to operate with one man having the ultimate approval over the television product — and McMahon could take a completed show and change the entire thing right before airtime.
“It’s not like it used to be, you know, where the show is pretty much written and one person has to sign off on it like Vince did back in the day. Vince would see, you know, they would write the show and then right before he would rewrite it again.”
Booker believes that setup has changed dramatically. Instead of everything funneling through one person’s vision, he thinks WWE is now pulling ideas from several different places and simply grabbing the strongest one when it makes sense.
“It’s not like that anymore. I think ideas are coming from so many different places and I think it’s a matter of taking those good ideas just like we do here at Reality of Wrestling. Taking those good ideas and using them.”
Gilmore described it as a situation where the “best idea wins,” and Booker agreed with the basic idea that what WWE thought it was doing before a show might not necessarily be what ends up happening once everyone gets in the room.
There is already some backstage context surrounding Zayn’s latest championship win. Ringside News covered that WWE had an idea and timeline behind putting the championship on Zayn, with the title change designed to fit a larger story involving several wrestlers around the championship picture.
At the same time, there were people inside WWE who were against Zayn beating Punk, but the company ultimately went forward with the move. Booker’s description of WWE creative also isn’t coming completely out of nowhere. Cody Rhodes previously explained that Triple H’s WWE creative system gives talent more room to bring ideas forward and collaborate, a major difference from the old Vince McMahon system Booker was describing.
There’s another major piece to this too — a lot of the people actually helping run WWE creative aren’t the same people who were in those seats when the TKO era started. The writing room beneath Triple H has gone through a steady amount of turnover since WWE and UFC officially came together under TKO in 2023.
Ryan Callahan is one of the biggest examples. Callahan had been running SmackDown as its head writer before parting ways with WWE in June 2024, with John Swikata moving into the lead role afterward. Callahan had been an important part of WWE’s writing structure for years, so that alone represented a significant change in who was actually putting the weekly television product together.
He wasn’t the only writer to move on. Jennifer Pepperman, who had worked as a senior writer and producer in WWE since 2017, left in early 2024 before joining AEW, while NXT writer and producer Nick Bonanno also exited WWE’s creative team shortly afterward. Those moves meant multiple people with years of experience inside WWE’s creative system were already gone within the first several months of the TKO era.
Then came another major shakeup in 2025 when WWE cut Senior Vice President of Creative Writing Operations Christine Lubrano during a round of corporate restructuring. Lubrano had helped coordinate creative operations across RAW, SmackDown and NXT, making her exit another major change near the top of the writing structure.
Road Dogg became the next major name to step away from the weekly creative process. Brian James had been serving as a key voice and co-lead writer on SmackDown, but he left WWE’s creative team in March 2026 during another internal shakeup. James remains connected to WWE through a Legends deal, but he is no longer one of the people sitting in the room helping shape SmackDown every week.
That turnover makes Booker’s comments even more interesting because WWE hasn’t simply replaced Vince McMahon at the top and left everything underneath untouched. The people pitching ideas, running individual shows and helping turn those pitches into television have changed too. WWE’s current writing leadership now includes names such as Ryan Ward, Alexandra Williams, Jonathan Baeckstrom and John Swikata, with Triple H still sitting above the creative operation.
So maybe there is a giant master plan behind Sami Zayn sitting on top of WWE again — or maybe somebody walked into the room with an idea WWE simply couldn’t pass up. Either way, Booker T is making one thing pretty clear: the days of Vince McMahon sitting above everybody else with the power to rip up the show and start over are not how he believes WWE operates anymore, and even the group surrounding Triple H has continued changing as the TKO era rolls on.
Do you think WWE’s more collaborative creative process is producing better television than the Vince McMahon era, or did WWE benefit from having one person making the final call? Let us know what you think in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
