Thoughts on This Year’s WWE Draft

Last night on Monday Night RAW the WWE “shook things up” as they’ve been calling it by holding a draft wherein any random wrestler can end up being drafted between the three brands of RAW, Smackdown and ECW (in order of significance of course). Even though the draft is a complete crock where you almost always see big names come back to RAW like Batista and Rey Mysterio did last year, and chump jobbers like Vladimir Koslov (ECW’s only draft pick) go to the land of extreme, it is still interesting.

I thought it was a great idea to get Jericho and Mysterio over to Smackdown now that Triple H is back on RAW because of one simple great reason; every championship contender on Smackdown now actually looks like they matchup. In fact, the only guy that doesn’t match up other than the other true superstars (Chris Jericho, Jeff Hardy, Rey Mysterio, CM Punk, Edge, and perhaps a few others) is Kane who also was drafted from RAW to Smackdown. None of those guys would be much more than transitional champions as long as Triple H were around. Plus, Kane is a bum and can be used to create some awesome “David vs. Goliath” type matches. And honestly, let’s not get started on Great Khali. He could be thrown in to stir some ratings, but no title for him. I also think that the moves make way for guys like Shelton Benjamin and R Truth.

Another thing I liked was the switch between the middle titles; Rey Mysterio takes his Intercontinental Title to Smackdown, and MVP takes his US Championship to RAW as he was drafted from Smackdown last night. In all truth, I think that US title is the sweetest looking belt of all the WWE and will look much better on RAW than on Smackdown. Finally, you got that chip off the big chin block Vladimir Koslov over on Sci-Fi where he can scrap it up a few matches and make others like Christian, Jack Swagger, and Finlay look good. I wouldn’t mind seeing Koslov go at it with Tommy Dreamer either.

All in all, I think it was a decent draft, and there weren’t really many head scratchers. Pretty good job WWE.