Details on WWE creative roles of Paul Heyman, William Regal, Nick Khan, and more
Dave Meltzer provided an update on WWE’s creative structure in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Last week, a mild restructuring of WWE’s creative team took place, with Ryan Ward receiving a small promotion while SmackDown co-head writers John Swikata and Brian “Road Dogg” James took minor step-downs.
In Friday’s edition of the newsletter, Meltzer went into further detail regarding the roles of William Regal, Michael Hayes, Nick Khan, Paul Heyman, and others within the company.
Meltzer wrote:
“William Regal’s role isn’t really creative. His role is to critique the style and believability of the matches during the shows. Michael Hayes is a day of the show producer and is part f the creative on the biggest shows. Paul Heyman is involved with the long-term discussions as well as being hands on with the creative of his people which include The Vision, Lesnar and Reigns.“
“Nick Khan, even though it’s denied publicly, also has a voice when it comes to creative, but the only one he deals with is Paul Levesque and doesn’t directly deal with the creative team.”
The full edition of today’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter is available for subscribers here.
The recent creative change comes on the heels of WWE SmackDown moving back to a three-hour format beginning with the January 2 episode. In 2025, SmackDown ran as a three-hour show from the beginning of the year until July before reverting to two hours for the remainder of the year. Bryan Alvarez noted on an episode of The Bryan and Vinny Show that the show would likely follow a similar format in 2026.
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.