The WWE Draft was seen as quite odd by some WWE fans. Clearly, WWE was favoring WWE RAW throughout the draft. Some felt it was wrong that for every two picks WWE SmackDown Live had, RAW would get three. However, this was by no means the worst part of the entire thing. RAW drafted everyone who made sense, clearly. Meanwhile, SmackDown missed a variety of people that could have helped their brand. It seemed different from a real, organic draft. It was obviously storyline driven, but to feel it was all planned in advance totally took away from how good it could have been.
Several top stars went to RAW when SmackDown had more than enough opportunities to draft them over others. Cesaro and Kevin Owens went late enough for SmackDown Live to have drafted them. However, SmackDown did win a bit in the draft as they were able to draft Bray Wyatt, Randy Orton, Dean Ambrose, John Cena, and AJ Styles near the top of the draft. It was after the first five picks that things went south for the blue brand.
They would even avoid some championships near the top when they had more than enough chances to draft the New Day for example. They might have lost one of the top workers they drafted, but they would have gained a championship. Regardless, there seems to be a lot of internal issues over the draft. According to Daily Wrestling News , there is quite a bit of second-guessing now over the draft and the picks made.
It was speculated that Kevin Owens could end up going to SmackDown,while Randy Orton gets moved to RAW. This would be worse for the blue brand at the end of the day as losing Orton and gaining Owens may seem nice, but it would hurt to lose a top star for an up and coming star. The only way this could be done was via trade, and Owens is certainly not going to want to end up on SmackDowndue to his history with Shane McMahon, the commissioner of the brand.
With Orton also being a star for the brand, it would be idiotic to do a one for one trade with Orton and Owens just switching brands. The best thing WWE could do is having Alberto Del Rio and Randy Orton go to RAW for Cesaro, Kevin Owens, and a random star from the red brand like Darren Young. WWE would allow for two major current stars to leave and solve a couple of problems at the same time.
Alberto Del Rio is possibly leaving WWE when his contract comes up in October, but he may stick around if a favor was done for him. Del Rio was drafted to SmackDown, while his girlfriend, Paige, ended up being drafted to RAW . Both were said to have been upset about the separation, but management did this because they thought the couple had split due to Paige removing pictures of her and Del Rio from her Instagram page.
One would assume if only the pictures documenting the relationship were removed, then the couple would have ended, right? A couple days later, they were restored, but this didn’t give WWE enough time to shuffle their roster decisions around. Paige brushed this off as basically a tech issue, but why would only the Del Rio pictures be removed?
While WWE easily could just have Paige go to the blue brand, there is more of a need for her to be on RAW to help with the Women’s Division there, at least for the time being. If Del Rio went in the trade to the red brand, WWE could get a good mid-card heel character who might stick around if only for his girlfriend. Plus the red gets Orton, who could be an essential help to them as a great main event worthy veteran.
Meanwhile, SmackDown Live gets three great wrestlers with two being possibly in the prime of their careers. Meanwhile, Young is coming up well as a character and could improve to be a top mid-card worker while on SmackDown . Both brands win with this deal, and it would surely even the rosters out a lot. While, of course, none of this is concrete, we know WWE wants to shift things around, and it would be smart of them to consider solving a few problems while doing that.
[image via WWE]