Eric Bischoff says the finish that put the Undisputed WWE Championship on Sami Zayn was fundamentally sound and nothing more, and that watching it made him think WWE is missing Pat Patterson.
Zayn beat CM Punk in Mexico City on the September 11 SmackDown in a finish with several moving parts. Candice LeRae distracted the referee, Johnny Gargano came in and tried to hit Punk with the belt and got caught with a Go to Sleep, Zayn went for the belt himself, and Kevin Owens ran in and swung it at Zayn and hit Punk instead when Zayn ducked. Zayn low blowed Owens and finished with the Helluva Kick. Conrad Thompson sent Bischoff a 54-second clip of the finish before recording 83 Weeks the following morning.
Bischoff’s first reaction was to the construction of it.
“The finish was, okay, it was fundamentally sound, but it was really nothing special. There was no real emotional overflow in that finish as it was going down,” he said. “It was like we’re going to the finish, but there was no build. There was no drama associated with that finish. It was a very onesie, twosie, threesie. You do this, I do that, you do the boom, I get the bump, we’re done.”
His word for it was formulaic, and he was upfront that he does not watch as a fan.
“I view it as a producer. I can’t help it,” Bischoff said. “My views on these things probably won’t align very comfortably with many people, because I’m looking at things differently than you are.”
The second thought was about who is not in the building.
“The first thing I thought of is, I bet you they’re missing Pat Patterson. I bet you they’re missing that one person that can really do it,” he said.
Bischoff was careful to say he has no standing on the subject himself.
“I’m not a finish guy. I’ve never even been in a room with a really good finish guy, where they were talking about the minutiae of a really good finish,” he said. “I’ve never been exposed to that, so I don’t want to sound like I have. But I’ve been around enough of it to know what I was missing.”
Asked whether Michael Hayes fills that role now, Bischoff said probably, at least partly.
“Michael’s Michael. You can say whatever you want. He’s a brilliant head. You’ve got some really smart people around there, including Heyman, now Bruce,” he said. “There’s still some guys that have connective tissue to the wrestling psychology that has always made wrestling work.”
His broader worry is about what that pressure does over time.
“There’s a stronger pressure to move forward with not necessarily wrestling psychology things,” Bischoff said. “In the push to get more mainstream, we’re losing a little bit of connection to what makes wrestling special and unique from other forms of TV.”
Patterson worked for WWE from 1979 until his death in 2020 and is widely credited with laying out many of the company’s biggest finishes, as well as creating the Royal Rumble match. He was the first Intercontinental Champion and spent most of four decades in the role Bischoff is describing, sitting in production meetings working out how matches should end rather than writing the stories that led to them.
It is the second thing Bischoff has said about this title in as many segments. Asked separately on the same episode about whether frequent title changes devalue a championship, he said they do, and convicted himself of having done it in WCW. The Zayn win was the fifth time the Undisputed WWE Championship has changed hands in 2026, and Zayn’s first reign, which began at Night of Champions in June, lasted nine days before Punk took it from him on Raw in July.
Zayn has promised Gargano the first shot at it, having agreed to the deal before the match.
