With NFL teams less than 3 weeks from being on the clock draft season is heating up and not to be outdone Triple H announced the return of the WWE Draft this past week on SmackDown. As of this writing there have been no details announced other than him calling it “The biggest draft ever!” and stating that “Every superstar will be eligible!” The WWE Draft or Superstar Shake-Up has taken place under different names with various formats and rules changes over the years but it always serves the same core purpose; set the rosters for the WWE television brands until the next event of it’s kind occurs. While it’s often had mixed results the draft itself is one of my favorite events on the WWE caldendar so here’s some of the things I’d do or address to make it the biggest and best draft yet!
1. Assign people to make the picks for the brands. Ideally WWE would bring back the concept of independent GMs for both Raw and SmackDown (as well as NXT in the unlikely event they made picks) but if they didn’t want to have weekly characters running each show I’d settle for them telling us “executives” at USA and Fox are making the calls. I don’t even have to see their faces. They can be nameless, faceless figures. But just give me some sort of justification for why a draft needs to exist in the first place. Because otherwise, as has been the case in the past, it just feels like WWE arbitrarily dividing the roster and while that may be true in reality, in the confines of the shows there should be more logic to it.
2. Have everyone eligible to be picked from the start of the Draft. Recent iterations have seen a pool of talent available to be drafted on Raw and a pool available on SmackDown. In reality I get that the reasoning is to not flood one night with all the big names and risk the other show having lower ratings because the big names are gone. But I want this to feel as real as it can so having everyone on the board right away helps that. If you’re afraid of the other night drawing poorly announce that the first male, female and tag teams picked by each brand will compete against each other on the 2nd night.
3. Set up rules that justify tag teams being split. In the past, we’ve seen some teams be drafted as a unit and others where just 1 member is taken and I’ve never understood the thinking behind it. Once again, in reality, it’s usually to try to give somebody a singles push without necessarily having to do a break-up angle but the idea of a brand just willingly forfeiting a free pick never added up to me. The easiest solution for me would be that every single pick is just 1 person. If you wanted to be a bit more convoluted you could say that if you take a tag team or faction you forfeit your corresponding picks that follow (i.e. lose the current pick and your next one if you take the Street Profits or lose your current and the following 3 if you draft all 4 members of Judgement Day together). This would at least give a theoretical executive or GM pause and make them think about if they really want an existing alliance. You could also claim there was a “salary cap” which would mean tag teams cost more than their members individually. I don’t need to be given specifics on what that cap number is or how the contracts break down but just that simple disclaimer would give break-ups more sense.
4. Draft immediately after Backlash or the following PLE. One major issue that has plagued past Drafts and shake-ups has been the timing of the events. They’ve continually happened after matches have already been announced for the following PPVs/PLEs but prior to the events leaving us with awkward periods where the brands are still blurred or we seemingly know the result of the match, especially if it’s for a championship. Drafting immediately after a big event would let you start with a clean slate and lessen the predictable feel of the PPV/PLE.
5. Limit the people who can move between brands and have logical reasons they can. The latest cop-out for people showing up on the other brand was “The quarterly brand to brand invitational” which allowed a wrestler to appear on the other brand 4 times a year. In theory that’s a sensible rule that could have made for interesting plot points. The problem was there was never a firm count of which appearance number a superstar was on and it was essentially rendered meaningless as people just started showing up on the opposing brand with no reason given. In reality there should be 9 people (more if belts change hands) during the course of the year who can move from brand to brand; the Undisputed Universal WWE Champion, the men’s Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions, the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions, the Money in the Bank case holders and the Royal Rumble winners. That’s it. That gives you flexibility to handle injuries by changing champs or using any of those 9 people on the other brand. Anyone else you want to move should be done through a direct trade. You could also have contract negotiations and different people on deals that last different lengths which would justify more brand to brand movement but then you start to muddy the waters more than I’d like. Though an option to make that a bit more clear would be something like the night 1 draft picks get 1 year deals, the night 2 picks go through SummerSlam and any picks after only go through the end of June but again, that gets to be way more complicated than wrestling should be and would be best done with a companion piece on the WWE site that I don’t trust them to do.
6. Supplemental picks for NXT. Inevitably these usually end up feeling like a bit of a raid of NXT. And in the WWE’s defense that really is the reason NXT exists. But we do see superstars going back down to NXT from time to time like Dolph Ziggler, Apollo Crews, Johnny Gargano, New Day, etc. often without explanation. This could be a bit convoluted but having each brand either assign a pool of say 10 superstars NXT can pick or 10 who are protected that NXT can’t touch and then letting NXT pick a replacement from that list whenever somebody gets called up would be a way to keep things more balanced and add excitement to NXT. Say if NXT lost Pretty Deadly but took Los Lotharios that could be a win-win for both sides. Or they give up Roxanne Perez but get back Nikki Cross you’re in the same boat. You can have a logical reason why NXT can’t just take The Bloodline or Seth Rollins while still helping things stay fresh and make sense.
7. Tell Draft stories leading up to and following the draft centered around the Draft. Have a tag match where the winning team has to be drafted as a unit. Have a tag team drafted unexpectedly low and one partner turn on the other because they feel like they brought their draft stock down. Talk about how the higher the draft pick the higher their contract so somebody like Baron Corbin could be broke again after being a low pick or somebody like Cameron Grimes can be back on his Gamestonk success when he shockingly gets taken high. Have the last pick spend all year proving themselves while the top pick struggles living up to their expectations. Have a match or tournament where the winner can pick what brand they go to. Have somebody hold out trying to get a better deal.
8. Have a draft panel. This could be similar to the pre-show panels but have non-wrestler wrestling personalities like Sam Roberts, Rosenberg or Kaz on for the Draft special reacting to each pick like it’s real life. Who is a reach? Who is a stud? Treat it like a special event and a real thing.
9. Turn one of the C shows into a free agent showcase show. This is probably the least likely of all of my ideas to actually come true but shows like Main Event or NXT Level Up seem to only exist because they’re contractually required to exist. So why not give them a bit of a purpose and say that those are essentially an open mic night for wrestlers. You could showcase people who aren’t getting TV time. Take, not a huge pool of talent, but maybe 10 men and 8 women currently not doing much on the main roster like the aforementioned Los Lotharios and let them put on fun matches there in hopes they get signed by Raw or SmackDown. You could even use it as essentially real life tryouts to get indie talent in front of your live crowd like AEW does with Dark without officially signing them.
10. Change up the show presentations. This also feels unlikely with WWE going to that giant generic video wall less than 2 years ago for both shows but I loved pre-pandemic that WWE had added a visual difference to Raw and SmackDown with Raw having that quarter pipe type curved tron and SmackDown having the portal looking semi-circles on the ramp. There’s also the way the original SyFy run of NXT was first shot where matches were filmed closer and from a different angle than just your typical hard cam. Give each brand a distinct look and feel.
11. Put the talkers and characters on Raw and your wrestlers on SmackDown. Obviously, this isn’t saying 100% of each type of person on each brand and there are quite a few people who can do both. But with Raw being 3 hours there are so many more opportunities to use that time to grow stories and characters. Because SmackDown is the “A show” they’ve gotten the majority of The Bloodline stories but Raw being an hour longer feels like it would benefit so much more from the ability to stretch a story thread. Conversely, SmackDown feels like it’s been the perfect place for a guy like Ricochet because the shorter show means there’s almost no time for him to drone on and instead he can just get in, do all his fast paced action and high spots and move on to the next match.
If WWE did all these things I think you could really give the whole product a fresh and exciting feel and wash some of the stink off that came with Vince’s return. Now let’s see how much, if any, of this they actually do!
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