Vince McMahon is known to be a workaholic and he almost never misses work which means that the Boss is almost always present for all WWE shows.

This is why his absence from any WWE shows is always noteworthy and per Wrestling Observer Newsletter, this week’s SmackDown Live was one such special case where Vince McMahon was not present backstage.

Though this doesn’t mean that things were not approved by him as the Boss was constantly on the phone with the Officials in the arena and he reviewed the script for the show through the phone about an hour before the show went on air.

In Vince’s absence, Triple H ran things from Gorilla Position with Senior Vice President Bruce Prichard presenting the show to other producers.

It’s worth mentioning here that the announced Executive Director for the show Eric Bischoff was not present backstage for this week’s episode of SmackDown Live either.

While he is not expected to begin his tenure until after the Extreme Rules PPV, the backstage feeling is that he needs to get familiar with the things and him not being around puts him another week behind.

Interestingly, the Observer notes that the creative team and other backstage people have been told almost nothing about the former WCW Official working the new role and his name hardly comes up officially.

So it would be interesting to see how Bischoff settles in his new position at next week’s episode of the show and what changes he brings to the product after taking over.