John Pollock andWai Tingreview WWE Raw featuring the second night of the WWE Draft.
The final night of the WWE Draft featured Seth Rollins, Brock Lesnar, Charlotte Flair, Rey Mysterio, and Jinder Mahal among those drafted. Plus, Rollins goes Fiend Hunting, Tyson Fury and Braun Strowman sign the contract, Lacey Evans and Natalya bury the hatchet, new Raw tag champions emerge from the show, Shelton Benjamin loses to a real-life superhero, and more announcements are made for Crown Jewel.
I don’t think that would be good booking. Cain isn’t the guy to hold the belt right now. Honestly putting the belt on Brock prior to their match was a huge mistake. The match isn’t even about the title it is about Cain defending the Mysterio honor. It comes across feeling like Fox wanted the belt on Brock, but WWE also booked this match. With how they did the Kofi match they should have not even had that match have Mysterio come out before the match starts with Cain. Do that program and then come back to Brock vs Kofi after that match.
So having been through the whole draft I cannot get over how dumb WWE came across. I get wanting to split up the big stars, and even understand not wanting Stephanie not to be coming out toward the end of the show just announcing all jobbers. But honestly how many people really cared which show Shelton Benjamin or Liv Morgan ended up on.
Why not just do say the first 2 rounds of say 10 picks each show and have the panel discuss just those picks. Have one every few minutes (after matches or what not). Then have the 3rd round on be a WWE network exclusive or YouTube or whatever. So you have 10 picks on Smackdown and 10 on Raw. This will cover most top spots, would allow for some discussion between picks about what the other brand would do next.
So if Smackdown got the first pick and took Brock, the discussion is well do you take Seth your men’s champion, or Becky and lean on your women’s division? With 20 televised picks you are probably looking at
Seth
Brock
Roman
Bray
Becky
Charlotte
Sasha
Bailey
Orton
Kofi
New Day
AJ
SD tag champs
Raw Tag Champs
Women’s tag champs
Nakamura (IC champ)
Corbin
Drew
Kevin Owens
OC
Rey
Alexa
Braun
I’m sure there are some others that could sneak in there with explanations where “analysts” could discuss brand strategies, look at “best available picks etc.
Even with your “ top picks off the table by Rae you would still have interesting choices left on the board in the second round.
Then give Raw their extra picks in the later rounds.
This isn’t hard and would come across better as an actual draft. Where surprise early choices could set up storylines etc.
Have a “waiting room” with the top stars in it waiting to see what brand they are going to. Have them get interviewed etc.
Also don’t make factions one pick ( so good brothers are 1 pick and AJ is another pick adds some strategy/drama to picks)
Admittedly I didn’t watch the last hour, but just hearing what happened with Evans and Natty is so frustrating. I miss the days when they’d spend two minutes explaining things with a vignette. Would have been so easy to do a mutual respect/handshake in the back, especially with how their match last week was booked.
And the Stupidity continues. Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross have been traded to Smackdown. Ok cool, what is Raw getting in this trade? Apparently future draft picks. This isn’t the NFL there isn’t a draft of new talent or a salary cap so this makes no sense that you would you trade current talent for the ability to draft current talent again later. Raw used 2 picks for Alexa and Nikki, so unless they are getting like 5 picks why not just use the picks this draft.
People are speculating that Bliss and Murphy don’t want to be on the same show but I think people are probably just entertaining themselves with their own storylines. It’s better than the Lana/Rusev stuff at least. I’m on board with it.
I don’t care that there was a trade, just make it an actual trade. They very well could have known that they did not want to be on the same brand prior to the draft. But if not, ok have Smackdown sign Fire and Desire and the Iconics and trade one or both to Raw for Bliss And Cross it something similar it is not difficult to come up with a better story then “draft picks.”
I think when you look at it Alexa and Nikki we’re always going to be on Smackdown.
Who would Bayley feud with right now? Sasha is her friend. There aren’t really any babyface women on Smackdown. It’s clearly going to be an Alexa and Nikki vs Sasha and Bayley feud.
I suspect they did this on purpose to hype the potential trade
Which I think is fine, in that case though I would have had it so that factions, like the OC were split into the singles guy and the tag team. Then you could have had Raw take AJ early, take Alexa and Nikki with a pick and wait on Anderson and Gallows. Have Fox swooping and take the Good Brothers as trade leverage. Have the commentators act surprised by the Good brothers pick, but have say Joe mention that it gives them a good card for a trade if Raw wants to keep the OC together and play up the importance of doing just that very thing. Mention having talked to USA and saying they were pretty high on the OC.
Then you announce that trade after the fact. Bliss/Cross for the Good Brothers. After the fact it will obviously look planned from the start but it is a fake draft the whole thing is planned from the start. Stuff like this though would at least make it look legitimate. If you were going to do the picks thing the trade should have happened before the end of this years draft. So Raw trades Alexa and Nikki for Smackdown first pick in rounds 3-5 or whatever this year and then have them with 4 picks to 1 for those rounds. In that case though they needed to play up how high Fox had the team on their draft board or something.
Generally though the whole draft was poorly thought out.
The other issue is they just did Alexa and Nikki vs Bailey and she beat them in a handicap match, she and Sasha beat them handily in several tag matches etc. so it isn’t really a fresh matchup that I think fans want to see. It really feels like the wasted a lot of possible Bailey feuds prior to her full turn. Like Ember, they had them kind of aligned, with the turn Ember could have done her whole “what are you doing” thing and led to a program that was better than what they had as face value face.
The way the whole draft was put together shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Vince has no idea how a real draft is done. So we got this illogical mess. They don’t care about the draft or making it seem realistic or sports-like so why should we? Same thing with King of the Ring, Hell in a Cell, etc.
