One of the hottest topics among WWE fans in the last month has been about the budget cuts that are currently happening in the company. As we have mentioned in the past, there could be some serious spending cuts in the near future. One of the things that WWE has stopped doing at television tapings and even pay-per-views is that they no longer use pyro (or fireworks) at their events.
Using pyro at an event isn’t something that WWE always did, but in the last 20 years it certainly became part of the show whether it was a way to fire up the crowd at the start of the show, for a wrestler’s entrance (think of Edge for example) or when Kane would set the ring posts “on fire” every time he would enter a ring.
A lot of people have chimed in on the topic and recently, former WCW President and WWE talent Eric Bischoff chimed in on his podcast (thanks to Wrestlezone for the transcript):
“Sometimes you have to make decisions to make money but by not having pyro in every show it also gives you the opportunity for your PPVs, or a special match that you are going to have on television, to then use pyro and make it feel like an even bigger deal. If you are constantly using pyro you get so used to seeing it that it doesn’t really matter much anymore. I am sure they have to find all kinds of different ways to continue to save money. It’s just the nature of business. As far as having to get rid of pyro goes I don’t think it’s the end of the world at all and I think it provides them the opportunity to make something even more special when they do use it.”
He makes a great point there at the end especially by saying it will mean something more when they do use it in the future. Whether that’s only at a show like SummerSlam in less than two weeks or maybe WrestleMania. I’m sure we’ll see pyro on WWE TV again, but stopping it as a weekly thing really isn’t a major thing in the big picture.
Bischoff knows what he speaks of when he talks about money. After all, nobody spent somebody else’s money to try to put WWE out of business as much as Bischoff did. That’s not an insult either. Any time you have the authority to spend a billionaire’s money you have a good job and Bischoff’s the only guy that ever beat WWE at their own game. It only lasted for about two years, but it happened, and it may never happen again.
