Early last month, after WrestleMania, we reported that Road Dogg, also known as Brian James, had left his position as Head of Creative at Smackdown Live. The reports at the time said that he was frustrated with working all week on storylines for Smackdown, only for Vince McMahon to come in on Tuesday and change everything at the last minute. At the time we didn’t know what his future held, and given his apparent displeasure with how Vince was running things, there was a lot of speculation that he was probably done with WWE entirely, and might even join his friend and former tag team partner Billy Gunn in a backstage role at AEW. Now it seems that Road Dogg has found a different solution to the McMahon micro-management problem.
According to PWInsider, Road Dogg is now working at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando. Although his official title has yet to be confirmed, it’s likely that he’s taking on a creative role at NXT. Vince doesn’t meddle there the way he does on the Main Roster, and NXT honcho Triple H is an old DX buddy of Road Dogg’s, so it seems likely he’ll be happier there. As for how this will affect the quality of the NXT product, it’s impossible to say, because we probably never saw a Smackdown that was actually booked by Road Dogg without being completely rebooked by Vince. Time will tell how James does in his new role.
