Welcome to the “WWE Draft” edition of The Wrestling List.
Let’s just start and talk with the WWE Draft. WWE has really worked on making these two draft shows look very draft sports like complete with a panel, celebrity involvement, and the “war room” reactions. Soooo, the war room stuff was super lame and cheesy. Too much over the top overproduced reactions. I can’t decide if they actually wanted the war room to look super cheesy or what. LOL. The draft shows itself was a bit underwhelming for me with not a lot of excitement. From what I have heard, the networks did indeed have input on who they got with WWE wanting to make the networks happy with their rosters.
Let’s go over the selections. Keep in mind that WWE split the talent into two pools. So, only a certain amount of name talent was available to be drafted during Smackdown on Friday night and the rest were eligible on Monday night for Raw. If talent were not drafted, they can sign as a free agent. Here are the results in order as they happened on Smackdown. Raw got the first pick after Rollins defeated Roman Reigns by DQ after Bray Wyatt got involved
Round One: Raw – Becky Lynch, Smackdown – Roman Reigns. Raw – The entire group of the OC. Smackdown – Bray Wyatt. Raw – Drew McIntyre.
Round Two: Raw – Randy Orton, Smackdown – Sasha Banks, Raw – Ricochet. Smackdown – Braun Strowman, Raw – Lashley.
Round Three: Raw – Alexa Bliss, Smackdown – Lacey Evans, Raw – Kevin Owens, Smackdown – The Revival, Raw – Natalya
Round Four: Raw – War Raiders, Smackdown – Lucha House Party, Raw – Nikki Cross, Smackdown – Heavy Machinery, Raw – Street Profits
Here are the results as they happened on Raw.
Round One: Raw – Seth Rollins. Smackdown – Brock Lesnar, Raw – Charlotte, Smackdown – The New Day, Raw – Andrade with Zelina Vega
Round Two: Raw – Kabuki Warriors, Smackdown – Daniel Bryan, Raw – Rusev, Smackdown – Bayley, Raw – Aleister Black
Round Three: Raw – Cedric Alexander, Smackdown – Nakamura, Raw – Humberto Carrillo, Smackdown – Ali, Raw – Erick Rowan
Round Four: Raw – Buddy Murphy, Smackdown – Roode and Ziggler, Raw – Jinder Mahal, Smackdown – Carmella, Raw – R Truth
Round Five: Raw – Samoa Joe, Smackdown – The Miz, Raw – Akira Tozawa, Smackdown – King Corbin, Raw – Shelton Benjamin
Round Six: Raw – Rey Mysterio, Smackdown – Chad Gable, Raw – Titus O’Neill, Smackdown – Elias, Raw – Liv Morgan
Let’s analyze. Becky and Charlotte together on Raw. Becky and Sasha are now split up. Bayley and Sasha are on the same brand. Raw women’s champion stays on Raw. Smackdown women’s title stays with Bayley on Smackdown. WWE title stays on Smackdown with Brock. Universal title stays with Raw with Rollins. Intercontinental championship goes to Smackdown. Women’s tag team champions will be defended across shows from what they said tonight. You’ll notice that the real life couples are staying together on brands. Glad Miz is moving back to Smackdown. Felt like he was getting lost on Raw. Truth and Carmella are split up. Where has Elias been???? Bliss and Nikki stay together. New Day all stay together. I was wondering if they might break that up. I was hoping Aleister might go back to NXT since he has been barely been used on the main roster. Imagine how you feel if Mahal gets picked over you as I questioned he is still there when his name popped up.
I thought Smackdown was a boring show for the most part……and then we hit the end. WOW. I’m surprised people weren’t texting me and checking on me. LOL. We get to the Smackdown women’s title rematch with Charlotte defending against Bayley. The last image we saw of Bayley were her in tears at ringside after losing the belt. She walks out and I say hey, she is wearing a hoodie. That is different. Then, the music stops. Well, ok. She pulls the hoodie back and I say, ohhhh, the side pony tail is gone. She pauses and grabs a weapon and destroys the Bayley buddies. It was quite the scene. The match goes on and Bayley ends up countering the figure eight into a cradle winning back the women’s title. I reacted with a wow, what. Then, she cuts a heel promo telling all the fans off. New music debuts and Bayley holds up the women’s title. The heel turn is officially complete. I said lately that they were going to have to do something cause the heel turn wasn’t working in the form that it was. Now, this heel turn has a chance as she completely demolished the gimmick in just a few minutes showing the new dark side Bayley. I realllllly like my good girl Bayley so this is a tough heel turn for me but I see a lot of potential in this too if done right. The opening match of Smackdown had Reigns and Rollins. Bray Wyatt got involved and pulled him under the ring. Rollins then pulled back up out of it as Bray peeked up from under the ring. So, they aren’t giving up with the backlash. They clearly have leaned back in which continued on Raw which I will cover in a minute. I’m so tired of Corbin and Gable matches. They have wore that thing out. Brock and Heyman were on the show cutting a promo about the match with Cain. They ran images from their UFC fight showing the scar that Cain left Brock with and Cain promised to leave a scar on the other side of his face too. Funny note is that on instinct, I went to USA for Smackdown instead of Fox. This will take some getting used to.
Tonight’s Raw continued the draft. Not a lot to say about it. The Bray/Rollins stuff continued with Rollins saying he was going to make a trip to the firefly funhouse. At the end of the show, we saw Rollins attack Bray in the funhouse to which Bray looked sadly saying why are you doing this to me which distinguishes the characters. Rollins then set flame to the funhouse. Did you notice that Rollins got booed with the attack on Bray? Other notes from Raw. Whew, Eric Young, thanks for coming. Squashed to Aleister. Why did they even move up Sanity to the main roster? Let them go back to NXT to Triple H too. I liked Buddy and Cedric. Good way to showcase that rivalry again and show fans what they can do for those that haven’t seen it. Natalya had a surprise partner to take on Asuka and Kairi. She brought out Lacey saying she wanted to team with someone that had pushed her to her limits. Asuka and Kairi did win the match with Asuka pinning Lacey. I was out so I didn’t get home in time to see Becky and Charlotte but I am sure they delivered.
Smackdown rating was down last week by about a million. Last week, the show did 3.8 million while Friday’s episode did 2.8 million. I expected the number to fall as numbers always fall coming off of shows like that.
That is it for tonight.
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