Seth Rollins WWE Women's Champion Charlotte Finn Balor Roman Reigns Brock Lesnar WWE Tag Team Champions The New Day (Big E, Kofi Kingston, & Xavier Woods) Sami Zayn Sasha Banks Chris Jericho US Champion Rusev (w/ Lana) Kevin Owens Enzo & Cass Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows The Big Show Nia Jax Neville Cesaro Sheamus The Golden Truth Titus O'Neil Paige Darren Young Sin Cara Jack Swagger The Dudley Boyz Summer Rae Mark Henry Braun Strowman Bo Dallas The Shining Stars Alicia Fox Dana Brooke Curtis Axel
SmackDown
WWE World Heavyweight Champion Dean Ambrose AJ Styles John Cena Randy Orton Bray Wyatt Becky Lynch I-C Champion The Miz (w/ Maryse) Baron Corbin American Alpha (Chad Gable & Jason Jordan) Dolph Ziggler Natalya Alberto Del Rio The Usos Kane Kalisto Naomi The Ascension Zack Ryder Apollo Crews Alexa Bliss Breezango Eva Marie The Vaudevillains Erick Rowan Mojo Rawley Carmella
Quick analysis is another attempt at making SmackDown as good as RAW has died in record time.
Favorite parts of the post show/jobber draft speed round - Alberto looking like he hated his life - Kalisto flubbing a promo and walking off to end it - Heath Slater flipping out about not being drafted
They wisely avoided giving themselves time to explain why Mojo and Carmella were drafted and not Nakamura, Joe, Bayley or Asuka (when they could've just said people going for the titles were off limits and not seemed as dumb.)
Do we know anything about the creative teams for these shows? Maybe if a different creative team can make better use of a Ambrose, Bray, Ziggler and Del Rio then Smackdown is a bit better, but man, even then those are pretty lopsided rosters.
That women's division is pretty brutal. If Smackdown has their own women's title Becky and Nattie should just take turns with the belt until they do bring Bayley up.
And man, they did American Alpha no favors with those tag teams.
I love Heath Slater, I wish he was getting Darren Young or Zack Ryder's title spots.
The presentation of this whole thing was worse than than I ever imagined.
Steph was beyond obnoxious all night and pairing her with Foley was a train wreck that I somehow didn't see coming until it was in front of me.
Daniel Bryan looks like a total dope missing the boat on his type of guys like Cesaro and the NXT crew. I wonder if there was a point when he realized he made a terrible mistake signing on for this role while standing up there?
American Alpha get the bump ... to a show without all the tag teams.
Kalisto goes to the show ... without Cruiserweights 'god damnit wooh'
Chris Jericho gets picked high AND pins Cesaro clean as he continues to morph into that type of guy from WCW he rallied against.
What a shit show.
Hey, Lawler is back already.
Luke Harper is a nice free agent.
This sounds like a strange thing to say, but with the way WWE has been throwing things at the wall lately Broken Matt Hardy couldn't have come at a better time for TNA to get a look from bored and wandering eyes.
What about the lopsided title count too. Let's say for now the wwe title is on both shows, Raw got the US, Crusierweight, Womans, and Tags. Smackdown live got the IC. Young might even win the IC for RAW. I doubt he will, but I bet Ryder brings the US back to SD. Can The Wyatts win the Tags to SD or will they float too?
WTF was that. The first Smackdown picks were money then it turned into a shit show. I am not sure what the point is having all the championships on Raw is. If I am a USA executive with half a brain and my major demand was to make Smackdown interesting, I would be furious. Cena apparently isn't even going to do the house shows. I also wouldn't have even drafted Brock with the second drug test announced earlier today. Play him as the free agent. Do something interesting. They keep half assing this shit and less people keep watching. Raw's rating has to make them nervous and if this doesn't do well then I am not sure what their plan C is.
The show with the 'new cruiserweight division' has, like, three cruiserweights.
Have they STILL not explained the title situation? Does the world championship, women's title and tag titles all float between both shows, or is Raw indeed as absolutely lopsided with belts as it seems? And if you're, say, American Alpha on Smackdown and the tag belts are on Raw, why wouldn't you immediately be lobbying for a trade?
Breaking up AJ and Gallows/Anderson so quickly seems like a big mistake. Swap Balor and AJ, to perhaps build to a larger Club reunion down the line.
George Michael weighed his options. Maeby had chastised him for not taking risks, and what would be a bigger risk than perpetuating a lie about software just to ignite the passions of a woman? Of course it would be a lie, and since Maeby wouldn't know it was a lie, he wouldn't appear to be taking a risk. Perhaps the bigger risk was to tell his father he was lying, that he came up with it because he wanted his father to leave so he could enjoy what remained of his senior year. After all, he wondered, wouldn't that be the course of action taken by an overtly sexual man, a man who owns a pair of matador pants? He had not responded now for 41 seconds according to his unfailing internal clock, and it was time to come clean.
#RAW: Michael Cole, Byron Saxton & Corey Graves #SmackDownLive: Mauro Ranallo, John "Bradshaw" Layfield & David Otunga(!)
Well, we got rid of Lawler. I wonder how long it'll take JBL to pack up and permanently relocate to Bermuda rather than work on Tuesdays. Or maybe he'll suddenly stop sucking and maybe Saxton will blossom without having to work with JBL OR Lawler? Ah ha ha. I can dream!
(Of course I have no idea who might end up on "Main Event" or "Superstars" but nobody *I* know is watching those shows...)
Wow. That's just...wow. The only thing I can hope happens is that they trade some people, and they can/will introduce more people later.
Heath Slater - free agent who shows up on both shows could be hilarious (as long as Kane and Henry don't squash him every week. Oh they will? Damn)
The one thing I understand from a business point of view is that they wait with Bayley. You want that to be a special moment. Obviously from a story pov it's crazy she wasn't drafted. I have to say that technically SD has the better women's wrestlers. But nothing to fight for.
Tag teams they're about even once you look at actual skills. But they have their work cut out to actually let people believe that. The question is, will the crowd buy into renewed pushes for the Vaudevillains, Ascension, Breezango.
JBL on Smackdown will be bad. Mauro likes to make it sound like a real contest, JBL will constantly crap all over him.
How about a clusterfucky Battleground that sets up the rosters shifting. The nature of the rules would seem to indicate that Smackdown would grab all the tag teams and Raw would focus on women and cruisers. My goodness, I can write ths shit
Originally posted by dMp The one thing I understand from a business point of view is that they wait with Bayley. You want that to be a special moment.
I wondered if Bayley was going to be Sasha's mystery partner and didn't want to spoil it. Bayley doesn't make much sense for Sasha's partner from a character standpoint, but she's the biggest face pop they could get.
Originally posted by dMp The one thing I understand from a business point of view is that they wait with Bayley. You want that to be a special moment.
I wondered if Bayley was going to be Sasha's mystery partner and didn't want to spoil it. Bayley doesn't make much sense for Sasha's partner from a character standpoint, but she's the biggest face pop they could get.
I'm pretty certain that's what's going on. Holding somebody off to just past the draft is really weird, but probably works out better in the long run if they don't immediately fuck it up.
Which, y'know, they probably will.
Not knowing how the titles work - do any float? - really killed any enjoyment of this Draft. Logically (hah), the first picks should have all been champions or the people contending for those titles at Battleground. But maybe not if the titles float? This is basic stuff, and it's really, really important for whatever story they were trying to tell. I say "whatever," because I sure as hell don't know what it was supposed to be. And as somebody who's seen all previous drafts, I think this was the most lopsided one they've ever done. Weeks of building up the idea that Battleground will be the "last" contest between Owens and Zayne, only to draft them both to RAW. And Shane's "New Blood" initiative picks Cena and Orton third and fourth. Man, I just don't even know here.
Most important, completely ignored part of the show: that WAS Sasha's first pinfall loss on the main roster, right??
Originally posted by thecubsfan Favorite parts of the post show/jobber draft speed round - Alberto looking like he hated his life - Kalisto flubbing a promo and walking off to end it - Heath Slater flipping out about not being drafted
Also Cesaro's (shoot?) promo on the Network post-show where he seemed legit pissed about being on RAW, flat-out said he'd rather be on SD!, mocked never being allowed to speak and took a swipe at the focus on the authority figures instead of the wrestling. It was absurd when the Big Show was drafted ahead of him (along with some other folks)...
I agree on Bayley showing up at Battleground.
I also appreciate that they tried to make it a Real Draft with picks once again instead of that ridiculous random "Draft Lottery" of yore.
Heath Slater as the joke stinger on the night WAS pretty funny (and he might not be cleared to wrestle yet after that injury over the weekend).
I watched a bit of the draft via a WWE live SnapChat feed. There were Jolly Ranchers advertisements interspersed with the WWE videos. These were all wrestling-related animations, so obviously something they specifically made to run during WWE content. And every single one of them ended with the new Jolly Rancher slogan:
So if "Demon Kane" is drafted to Smackdown, does that mean "Corporate Kane" can/will appear on RAW?
I concur with all sentiments echoed here that this was a shit show. And I was a dope for tuning into the Network to watch the additional trainwreck hour.
The inside hints are that the mystery woman to team with Sasha is Nia Jax.
It would be nonsense to debut someone days after the draft who wasn't drafted, though they're clearly not beyond nonsense.
To me, there's no point in debuting Bayley without her getting a title shot right away. So either wait until a SmackDown women's title is created, or wait until the Sasha/Charlotte program finishes.
Tonight is the first night of the World Title Series. It is basically a revamped version of the Bound for Glory Series. It will be to crown a new TNA World Heavyweight Champion.