If done well, the WWE Draft can truly freshen things up. Moving people around creates new pairings of Superstars to feud with each other, NXT call-ups can be game-changers, and it can change careers for the better.
When done poorly, WWE can create massive problems for months to come, stifle talent to be stuck in a go-nowhere position, and back themselves into a corner with illogical plot holes.
There were certainly some major positives to this year’s draft so far, but even before the dust settles, some huge problems are already glaringly obvious—to the point that you have to wonder how WWE didn’t see these things coming when planning this out.
Let’s start breaking down some of the future issues I can imagine WWE will run into and look back on with the benefit of hindsight and wish they hadn’t made.
Before anyone complains that this is “always negative” and so on, I’d like to toss out some of the massive “wins” from this year’s draft that prove this isn’t an all-or-nothing doomsday scenario:
My biggest “WTF?” about this is that Raw has far too many babyfaces and not enough heels, while SmackDown has far too many heels and not enough babyfaces.
Granted, maybe WWE has plans to do a hard reset with some of these people and they plan on turning them heel/face to balance it out, and we just don’t know that yet. But if that isn’t the case, we’re looking at some major problems.
Who fights Roman Reigns over the next year heading into WrestleMania 40? We know he’s not dropping that belt any time soon, given they felt the need to create another world title just to avoid never having any world title matches and not having the belt ever change hands.
Reigns will probably not be defending that championship more than 3 or 4 times in the next 12 months. But even so, your ENTIRE list of babyfaces on SmackDown right now consists of Bobby Lashley, The Brawling Brutes, part-timer Edge, The Latino World Order, The O.C., The Street Profits and Rick Boogs. That’s it. And when you toss out how Angelo Dawkins, Cruz Del Toro, Karl Anderson, Ridge Holland, etc as well as Boogs aren’t actually viable contenders in any way, that means the entirety of SmackDown’s future for Reigns is AJ Styles, Bobby Lashley, Edge who he’s already fought, Rey Mysterio and I guess Sheamus or Santos Escobar, and maybe Cameron Grimes if he stays a face, but he’s not ready for that.
That’s not good enough. Yes, Lashley vs. Reigns and Styles vs. Reigns will be more than fine for one-off feuds, but the rest don’t measure up right now to hold down the fort. Even though I’m a fan of them, I’m just being realistic.
And if you say “But Reigns is only defending the belt 3-4 times, right? So he only needs those guys.” You mean to tell me you’d buy into investing 2-3 months per each of those to have a “fight with Solo Sikoa and The Usos and cut promos about Reigns until we have the one match that ends the same way all those matches do” storyline? You’d really be interested in that? And who is the big person you build to out of that bunch for WrestleMania 40? Oh, I know, “not any of them, because we’ll get The Rock instead, and if not, we’ll just transfer someone over from Raw in the Royal Rumble.”
That’s pretty lame, and it also means that the United States Championship will have to become the de facto “might as well be the top title” since it’ll be the only one defended. But if you look at that list of babyfaces, guess how many heels Austin Theory has that will be fighting against him for equal footing for that “I can’t possibly beat Roman Reigns because he’s a heel and won’t drop the belt anyway, so I’m stuck hoping for the U.S. title at best” spot?
Assuming Grimes stays a face, Theory still has Karrion Kross and LA Knight and Grayson Waller. All of those guys are going to be positioned as the ones to lose the feuds that put over the Lashleys and company on their way to fighting Roman. That’s a shame.
When you look at Raw, they have too many babyfaces in the upper spots.
A-Tier Guys (all fighting for that top spot) = Cody Rhodes, Drew McIntyre, Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins
B-Tier Guys = Braun Strowman, Johnny Gargano, Matt Riddle, Ricochet, Shinsuke Nakamura
C-Tier Guys = Dexter Lumis, Odyssey Jones
Don’t forget about Chad Gable and Otis, or Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, or Apollo Crews.
Who are the top heels? I get the sense Gunther (who is already holding the midcard title, so that rules him out) and….well, then, we’re looking at Bronson Reed, JD McDonagh, and The Judgment Day’s Finn Balor and Damian Priest. The Miz is there, yeah, and I love The Miz, but he rarely gets treated like a true TOP heel. Maybe this changes that, but I don’t have faith in that happening.
I feel like at the very least, McIntyre needs to turn heel, if not also a guy like Strowman. And when you factor in that Tommaso Ciampa will likely go to Raw with Gargano once he’s healthy, and I think we’d all agree they work better as a babyface team, then that’s one more face to add in there.
We need Randy Orton to come back and to be on this brand, too. Maybe Bray Wyatt (ugh) if they have him as a heel. Poor Kross isn’t going to touch a world title ever at this rate, but if he were in this group, he’d easily have feuds to check off with Rhodes, Rollins, Strowman, etc.
As of right now, 19 men and 4 women are specifically classified as main roster free agents, rather than NXT Superstars. It makes no sense for 2 of them, but whatever.
Here is where I think they’d be best served:
At this point, Raw has its problems, but because it has more people, there’s more flexibility. I can’t wrap my mind around how SmackDown is supposed to work with mostly just a few babyface factions and The Bloodline without its leader most of the time. I guess they really plan on having Solo Sikoa and The Usos hold down the fort for the next year.
What did you think of the 2023 WWE Draft? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!
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