WWE: The Draft (Rules, Rosters, etc.)

[Woof]

Smackdown took Naomi though. The Ascension ended up being a extra pick in the round. I wonder if they're abandoning the 3-for-2 format now to help balance it out.

[The Chief]

Naomi was my guess for dead last, damn. Now I'm gonna say it's. .... Bo Dallas

[Matt D]

Ah yeah, I forgot about Naomi.

 

EDIT: They just missed out on Backlund doing the Millions of Dollars thing. Wasted opportunity.

[Scarlet-Left]

Am I right in thinking that Kalisto just promised to "do a good lucha thing"?

[The Chief]

Am I right in thinking that Kalisto just promised to "do a good lucha thing"?

It was a good Lucha...... thing.

 

Owen Hart would be proud

[El Dragon]

Am I right in thinking that Kalisto just promised to "do a good lucha thing"?

 

Not only that, he went off screen saying "god damn woo"

 

I'm in tears from laughing so hard.

[raul]

kalisto with a promo thing..

[...TG]

I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different, but there's no long-term plan here, right? They just threw this together this morning?

[Woof]

Heath Slater goes undrafted. Ouch.

[Jmare007]

So after all these picks RAW is still gonna struggle to fill that death 3rd hour and SD will struggle to grab people's attention.

[The Chief]

Heath Slater goes undrafted. Ouch.

Heath could make a great gimmick out of that if they go that route. Show him sitting in the crowd on both shows.

[hammerva]

So guys that are undrafted are what released? Moved to NXT (which for Heath Slater I would approve of)

[Woof]

So Raw winds up with 40 superstars: 33 men, 7 women, 7 existing tag teams.

Smackdown gets 31 superstars: 25 men, 6 women, 5 existing tag teams (6 if you count the Hype Bros).

 

Of course this doesn't include all the "free agents" they've been supposedly reaching out to, so I guess we can expect some surprise debuts/returns in the coming weeks.

[Woof]

So guys that are undrafted are what released? Moved to NXT (which for Heath Slater I would approve of)

 

Slater is the only one who wasn't drafted. And they just shut the lights out on him sitting alone in the draft room. They HAVE to make that into something.

[sek69]

I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different, but there's no long-term plan here, right? They just threw this together this morning?

 

Alvarez was mentioning on Twitter that the final details were hammered out minutes before the pre show started.

[Jmare007]

I think Breeze might be the biggest winner out of this whole thing. If Smackdown is this depleted in a couple of months he might get a legit chance to shine as a singles.

[C.S.]

I added this to the original post:

 

UPDATED: FULL DRAFT RESULTS

 

From WWE.com:

 

Round No. 1
1. Seth Rollins - Raw
2. WWE Champion Dean Ambrose - SmackDown Live
3. WWE Women's Champion Charlotte - Raw
4. AJ Styles - SmackDown Live
5. Finn Bálor - Raw from NXT

 

Round No. 2
6. Roman Reigns - Raw
7. John Cena - SmackDown Live
8. Brock Lesnar - Raw
9. Randy Orton - SmackDown Live
10. WWE Tag Team Champions The New Day - Raw

 

Round No. 3
11. Sami Zayn - Raw
12. Bray Wyatt - SmackDown Live
13. Sasha Banks - Raw
14. Becky Lynch - SmackDown Live
15. Chris Jericho - Raw

 

Round No. 4
16. United States Champion Rusev (with Lana) - Raw
17. Intercontinental Champion The Miz (with Maryse) - SmackDown Live
18. Kevin Owens - Raw
19. Baron Corbin - SmackDown Live
20. Enzo & Cass - Raw

 

Round No. 5
21. Gallows and Anderson - Raw
22. American Alpha - SmakDown Live from NXT
23. Big Show - Raw
24. Dolph Ziggler - SmackDown Live
25. Nia Jax - Raw from NXT

 

Round No. 6
26. Neville - Raw
27. Natalya - SmackDown Live
28. Cesaro - Raw
29. Alberto Del Rio - SmackDown Live
30. Sheamus - Raw

 

Round No. 7 (announced during WWE Draft Center Live on WWE Network)
31. Golden Truth - Raw
32. The Usos - SmackDown Live
33. Titus O'Neil - Raw
34. Demon Kane - SmackDown Live
35. Paige - Raw

 

Round No. 8 (announced during WWE Draft Center Live on WWE Network)
36. Darren Young (with Bob Backlund) - Raw
37. Kalisto - SmackDown Live
38. Sin Cara - Raw
39. Naomi - SmackDown Live
40. Jack Swagger - Raw
41. The Ascension - SmackDown Live

 

Round No. 9 (announced during WWE Draft Center Live on WWE Network)
42. The Dudley Boyz - Raw
43. Zack Ryder - SmackDown Live
44. Summer Rae - Raw
45. Apollo Crews - SmackDown Live
46. Mark Henry - Raw
47. Alexa Bliss (from NXT)

 

Round No. 10 Picks (announced during WWE Draft Center Live on WWE Network)
48. Braun Strowman - Raw
49. Breezango - SmackDown Live
50. Bo Dallas - Raw
51. Eva Marie - SmackDown Live
52. Shining Stars - Raw
53. The Vaudevillains - SmackDown Live

Round No. 11 (announced during WWE Draft Center Live on WWE Network)
54. Alicia Fox - Raw
55. Erick Rowan - SmackDown Live
56. Dana Brooke - Raw
57. Mojo Rawley - SmackDown Live from NXT
58. Curtis Axel - Raw
59. Carmella - SmackDown Live from NXT

Undrafted
Heath Slater

 

http://www.wwe.com/2016-wwe-draft-results

[cm funk]

Heath Slater undrafted is hilarious and could/should for make for funny TV with him showing up on both shows trying to get a job.....or going to NXT. I'm a big fan of his, solid hand and very entertaining

 

Wacky draft as per usual. Really wish they would have spelled out simple things like Joe-Nak, Asuka-Bailey and Revival-Ciampa/Gargano not being eligible due to being signed for NXT title matches at the next revival show. Doesn't take a whole lot to explain why none of them would be drafted, while others were, but they never bothered. They also never explained what's up with the WWE title, Womens title and Tag Titles. It's a major stretch to create a second Womens and Tag Title for SD.....and this supposed cruiserweight division on RAW is Neville and who? They should really have the 3 main champions free to float between brands.....while the IC and US stay on one show.....but all the rumours are going back to split titles. That SD womens division of Becky, Natalya, Naomi, Alexa, Eva and Carmella is not enough for a sustainable division.

 

Be interesting to see if there are trades made, what they do for FA signings with the rumours of vets from the past being brought back to fill out the rosters, and how they handle some of the further NXT callups

[Strummer]

Graves headed to Raw to team with Cole and Saxton. JBL replaces Lawler on Smackdown. So it's Mauro, Otunga and JBL Looks like Lawler is finished. Unless he goes to the B/C shows

[Parties]

I’ll say Styles at #4 wins most surprisingly high pick, while Apollo Crews (#45) is most surprisingly low.

In the end, they couldn’t help themselves. In a massive directional shift created for the purpose of boosting Smackdown’s ratings, Smackdown came away with the lesser brand, the lesser roster, the lesser influx of new/young talent, the lesser title scene. It may well still prove to be the better show. But this draft still feels like they just couldn’t go through with it in the end. There remains some strange internal perception of RAW as the McMahon family’s show, and SD as a stepchild. In the end, both RAW and SD look worse off, especially once the first segments of Steph humiliating Foley arrive.

The show that ended up benefiting the most, ironically, may have been NXT. Balor's move was telegraphed and a blessing in disguise. American Alpha is a loss, but what more did they have to accomplish? The developmental tag division isn't there to support them. Ditching Rawley and Carmella is a net positive. I enjoyed the last Jax match I saw, as she seemed to have greatly improved, but she’s not a huge deficit and they’re clearly in the mindset of finding and training a lot more women in the near-term of NXT. Ditto Bliss, who I like but is totally expendable.

Bryan should be forced to give a sabremetrics explanation for picking Rawley, based off a new stat he heard about from former Giants closer Brian Wilson: PUMP (Passion Unleashed Most Passionately).

[ragemaster]

The easiest thing to do because the depth of both divisions is weak, would have been have the women on smackdown and the tags on Raw.

 

Also should have overhauled the whole set, give them a ramp like wcw/Noah.

Change the barriers and give the commentators different tables.

Get ride of the blue lighting and the video walls.

 

But all of this is superficial, until they address the issue of how they are scripting the shows.

The whole run of shows, up to the split has been boring and uninspired.

 

Sack the whole writing team and spend some money on quality writers rather than just having quantity.

I would hire two per show and one other person who understands how wrestling works to keep them on track/logic of how wrestling works.

 

Then as Vince has paid for them to do a job, Vince should give them the direction he wants them to go in.

Once he's done this, they should be left to write the shows as that's what he's paying them for.

 

But the biggest issue is they need to change how they push stars, 50/50 booking needs to end.

Its crazy Ambrose is champion after the way he's been booked.

 

Apart from Cena and Lesnar, nobody has credibility of a world champion on ether brand.

If Ambrose lost next week to Del Rio or even the Miz who would be surprised.

 

If the Wwe were booking for the future, they should start rebuilding Ambrose now to beat Lesner at Summerslam.

 

Have Lesnar come out at next week's smackdown and destroy Orton, then have him demand to face Ambrose at Summerslam.

Ambrose could then ask Undertaker to train him (to help with his credibility) and then show training videos with them leading up the match.

[Lee]

Would it have been so hard for them to say "per request from William Regal, none of the current NXT champions or their number 1 contenders can be drafted" to explain the lack of picks for Joe, Nakamura, Asuka and Bayley? Yeah, it still doesn't explain Roode and Aries, but the fact they all got passed over for Nia Jax, Eva Marie and fucking Mojo Rawley is mental.

I know it makes more sense to debut those guys/gals later and not have them be lost in the shuffle, but in kayfabe terms I can't get past Daniel Bryan looking past those guys but giving a yes to Erick Rowan.

[Scarlet-Left]

Does anyone else know why Cesaro was the only person to express disappointment with the brand that picked them?

[Gutenberger]

There truly were some weird picks there. Styles being so high doesn't surprise me that much, what is more surprising is Finn being the #5 pick, although it surprises me in a good way.

 

Splitting up the Club at this stage irritates me. Why bother to have the little mini thing with AJ wanting to go alone bt then it being all a hoax and rejoining with thme only to split them up now. Only thing I can imagine is working towards a Balor vs. Styles match in the future.

 

Zayn and owens being on the same show is strange, seeing as they wanted to end that feud for good and now they just stick together again... Just weird.

 

Cesaro being picked so late reminded me of the said again and again that someone being picked late could lit a fire under them and really motivate. maybe that is the direction they're going with him. Give him that "I'll show you what I'm made of" gimmick, or go the other route and just let him don't give a fuck and do his thing with no egards to anything or anyone.

 

Overall, Raw seems to have gotten away much better, which was to be expected, but I had hopes they wouldn't do it. I've been asking myself if, with Raw getting both the women and tag team championships, maybe Smackdown does get the WWE chempionship. I know, it most unlikely, but it would be something really new and fresh.

[WingedEagle]

Haven't had time to digest the rosters, but I was always content with the proposed Rolins/Reigns and AJ/Cena headline acts. Some really interesting potential with women on the Raw side as I've become a big Nia Jax fan.

 

Biggest takeaway thus far is the huge improvement in announcing. Graves for JBL and JBL for Lawler should make both shows much better as long as Vince stays away from Graves's earpiece.