SLTD Discussion – The Draft

I was surprised by how many people reacted negatively to the draft. Of course, it’s how the majority of wrestling fans were going to react regardless of what happened. There’s no pleasing some people.

The only qualm I had with the whole thing was Cesaro being drafted so low. The guy is a workhorse and deserves way more than he’s getting. Otherwise everything seemed great. Naturally, Raw needed more people on the roster, so you shouldn’t be surprised there.

The real story is how they handle Raw and SmackDown Live going forward. Right now it’s pretty much all speculation. But I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.

The day after though, I saw an article saying ALOT of superstars were upset over how the draft went. Overall though, I will still be watching both shows and I’m looking forward to the future for both RAW and Smackdown!

So the long awaited draft arrived this past week on SmackDown Live, and it was rather… Underwhelming. Seeing Rollins, Styles, Charlotte and Balor getting picked so high up the draft was definitely awesome, and solidifies that this is indeed a new era. But where were the surprises? Where were the shocks? Where were the returns?

Most people expected this sort of outcome and WWE really failed in their delivery. We did not even get to see superstar reactions on SmackDown itself. Ultimately we are left with two rosters, of which Raw is superior on paper. It’ll be interesting to see how WWE goes about the next few weeks which are vital for setting the tone.

My initial thoughts on the draft, look straight away at Smackdown and personally I feel that Smackdown looks incredibly weak, aside from the top few picks in Ambrose, Styles, Cena, Orton and a few others, in comparison to Raw who in my opinion has a dozen of top drawing names. I understand that Raw is an hour longer and needs more wrestlers, but with Smackdown going live I’d like to think that WWE would make more of an effort to make Smackdown enticing and make it look like competition to Raw.

Another nitpick I had with the draft is that the women’s division has been split, what are Becky Lynch, Nattie and other female members of the Smackdown roster fighting for if the women’s champion is on the opposite brand. However this is a knee jerk reaction, but instead of giving me tons of answers on Smackdown it’s left me with tons of questions that’ll hopefully be answered in the forthcoming weeks.

@colinhebert614 (The Curtain Jerker)

After watching the WWE Draft this past Tuesday, 2 things came to my mind: 1. Raw looks like the superior brand, which I am sure WWE wants and 2. Based on the amount of people that watched the Draft live, Smackdown hasn’t seen over 3 million viewers at anytime in a long while, people love drafts.  With the selections of Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, The New Day, Charlotte, Rusev, Darren Young, Finn Balor, and the Club, there is an actual possibility that Raw could have every single championship in WWE after this Sunday’s “Battleground” PPV. 

This is something that I will go out on a limb and predict will happen.  Smackdown, even with Dean Ambrose, the current WWE Champion, John Cena, the face of the WWE, and AJ Styles, it is STILL the little brother brand to Raw being the big brother.  And with Raw being 3 hours and Smackdown still 2, this is what WWE wants.

Heading into the draft, I had written about my excitement for the future of the company with the brand split. Following Tuesday’s draft though, I’m not as enthralled as I was going in. There’s a lot of interesting scenarios that the draft created, including the Club splitting on AJ as well as being on the same brand as Balor. However, I do think that SmackDown!’s very much been shafted in terms of the talent. I don’t think wrestlers like Cesaro are on the right brand, in order to elevate their careers. I don’t think Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens should be on the same show. I don’t think Braun Strowman should be on his own. It boggles my mind that the cruiserweight division is on RAW and I don’t think the WWE compiled a good enough roster for that division. I don’t think just the likes of Finn, Neville and Zayn battling over the title will do it any good. I don’t think there’s any real sense of excitement coming out of the draft, as a lot of rivalries like Owens/Zayn and Corbin/Ziggler are still going on.

I think SmackDown! has the superior main event scene but RAW’s mid-card blitzed SmackDown! The NXT call-ups were questionable (with the exception of Finn Balor and American Alpha), and the NXT Women’s division has been left almost depleted. Bayley not being drafted doesn’t worry me as I think she’ll be showing up at Battleground anyway. I have no idea why Mojo Rawley was picked, other than to give him a main event run after so many years in developmental. I think that WWE probably will and most certainly need to make changes in the next few months, as I don’t think these rosters can really give the brand extension the feel it needs.