Brian “Road Dogg” James joined the SmackDown creative team in 2016 and was later elevated to considered one of the lead writers.
Although Road Dogg stepped down from his position as head author of SmackDown in 2019, he continued to work with WWE.
Road Dogg was released in January 2022 but returned as WWE’s Senior Vice President of Live Events in August 2022, replacing Jeff Jarrett.
The Wrestling Observer Newsletter is reporting that Road Dogg and John Swikata are currently the lead writers for WWE SmackDown.
The report states, “We were told that there’s a lot happening at once that one lead author on the show wasn’t enough. RAW has Ryan Ward and Jon Baeckstrom. Ed Koskey is there overseeing and editing the scripts, Bruce Prichard is the buffer between them and Paul Levesque.”
Swikata replaced Ryan Callahan as the top author this past June.
