The WWE Draft 2023: Night 2 Mindy’s Bakery Raw 1/5/23
 

So the draft takes place on 28th April and 1st May and we’ll probably get the usual “everybody in” approach.

What do you think we’ll see? Any guys/girls you’re hoping to see on particular brand/called up?

Kevin Owens and The Miz get drafted almost every single time. I hope they do not change shows.

LA Knight could benefit from a 3-hour show where they can flush out his personality even more.

Nakamura has been with Smackdown since he made his main roster debut. It'd be interesting if they moved him to RAW.

If they're serious about the brand spit, I hope there isn't any silly exchange of brand specific championships. I am still not over how cringeworthy the belt exchange was between Lynch and Flair. If you want to market your women's title as world championships, name them something better.

I also hope they split the tag team straps since there are so many solid tag team units on both shows. It'd make more sense to have separate belts for each show. If not, unify them already.

I really want to see them commit to a brand split like they did in the early 00s. It'll force them to get more creative and make new stars in the process.

Robert Lashley will go to SD to fight Ramon Reigns for a few months

You say your name is the Tribal Chief and you love to fight. Well, I say you're the Tribal chief and you're a bathturd!

Judgment Day to SD

Imperium to RAW

LA Knight to RAW

Seth Rollins to SD

Vintage!

I have to lol when they hype up "WHICH TEAMS WILL BE SPLIT IN THE DRAFT?" only for the rules to end up being that teams and stables can be drafted together.

I mean the rules kinda have to be that way. The very first draft had Vince draft D-Von right after Flair took Bubba. If this draft were a shoot there's no reason you'd ever let the other side build a tag division. So you either need to have random elements of the draft, or let teams be picked together.

But then the other side of it is you get dumb shit like The New Day splitting up because apparently SmackDown decided, nah, we don't want this heavily decorated 3-man stable, just give us Big E, thanks.

Remembering the several years of drafts where the picks were meant to be random but you had to win a match to get a pick for your brand

Very first year they did that, heel SmackDown champ Edge cheats to win a draft pick only to be terrified to see Great Khali join SmackDown. Shouldn't the heel champ be throwing the match in hopes of sending better competition away?

2004 was the only one that really made sense to me. Each side got like 5 or 6 picks out of a tumbler and that's it. Allowed them to flip a few big names around along with a few midcarders they wanted to push, broke up stables in a logical way etc

Yep. Not a fan that they move so many parts around. You end up moving half a division which means you’ve not freshened anything up.

I’d be happy with something like 5 saves, 5 steals, and 5 drafts from NXT/Free Agents. Limits the moving parts.

I came up with an idea that they could do the draft by having Raw and SmackDown essentially “bid” for talent. Each show gets assigned so many draft points. You then have to bid more of these points for certain talent.

This allows you to not lead with your hottest. You could open SmackDown with Sami and Owens finding out that they’re trading shows and when they lose the belts that’s it for them as a team. Montez Ford gets a much higher offer on him than Angelo Dawkins, which causes friction. Roman tells Paul to put a call in. Heyman asks Roman if he’s sure he wants to do this. After a tag team match, Jimmy Uso finds out that big offers were placed on him from Raw and SmackDown, but he’s staying on SmackDown. Jey Uso gets the same offer from Raw, but when SmackDown’s comes up, it says “No Bid.” Roman has essentially exiled Jey.

You could also do cute things like Dominik getting a massive offer from SmackDown, but Raw has had enough of him and doesn’t play for him at all. Bianca Belair could get the single biggest bid of the draft.

I dunno, I was just playing around with the idea.

VEER IS COMING

To Smackdown

Remember the reaction of the Fox war room when they got Natalya? Priceless.

i like they do it this year the same time as the real draft, the nfl draft.

WWE are apparently considering brand exclusive PPVs again. The way they structure them, I can definitely see it being more viable than it was in the past.

I actually didn't mind the brand-exclusive PPV's from the early 2000's. It gave a lot of midcarders/cruiserweights etc a chance to actually have meaningful matches, and gave that variety to the shows, without big names being left off.

But after twenty years of inconsistencies, I doubt this draft will mean anything and within two weeks they'll have people "invading" other shows, or "final picks before the rosters are locked" or whatever nonsense they come up with.

My only hope for it, and this is a long-shot because he hasn’t seen much use in it so far, is that Triple H might have more to do with it creatively.

Its solid in theory but I fear it would just result in more of the special attraction guys working more often.

Maybe theres an upside in that as well but there all ageing now.

Minor correction: USA Network executives

<blockquote class="reddit-embed-bq" style="height:500px" data-embed-height="500"> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/pzk2uf/last_years_draft_natalya_is_drafted_to_raw_and/">Last Year’s Draft: Natalya is drafted to RAW and the USA War Room goes wild!!</a><br> by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/topside_downes">u/topside_downes</a> in <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/">SquaredCircle</a> </blockquote><script async="" src="https://embed.reddit.com/widgets.js" charset="UTF-8"></script>

The War Rooms were the best lol

Everyone is speculating that the World Heavyweight Title is going to either Cody, Seth or Drew. It would be kind of fun if they all ended up on the same show as Roman, and were therefore out.

lol when Bork Lasnur gets the new title.

I don’t have a problem with Brock getting the new belt at all.

I think the only one they cannot put the new title on is Cody. The whole narrative is Cody came back to WWE to win the title that was taken from Dusty, not to win some brand new World Championship with zero lineage.

I think Lashley would work best since he never lost the WWE title clean either time, and never got a shot at Roman after that, but any upper level babyface but Cody would work.

Omos is clearly.goimg to be champion.

I really hope it isn’t going to be Seth or Drew.

So I haven't really commented much on Cody losing at mania very much, because I wanted to give it time to think about it, and to see where they go directly afterwards. There was an arguement to be made that Cody winning would have been a little to easy. And it would better mirror his father's career if he had to chase roman just as dusty chased flair.

I was starting to buy into the idea that it could work. I wasn't completely sold, as it's incredibly ambitious, but I wasn't writing off roman retaining as a miostake.

That changes with the introduction of a new title. It doesn't matter how good the story is or how over cody is. Cody winning the title will never, ever mean as much as when there was one, undisputed champion. Because he won't be THE champion. He'll be A champion.

If this was the plan, Cody should have won at wrestlemania.

Pretty sure Drew is on the way out.

If this was the plan, they definitely should have called an audible and had Sami Zayn fight Roman at WM and beat him.

Instead they flushed away their hottest storyline in years to go with Cody... and then didn't "finish the story" there either....

And now instead of being able to at least try to rekindle one or the other story for the next WM they have just completely flushed their whole 1000+ day story/build down the drain.

In order for Cody to "finish the story", he needs to win the title his dad never won. Not the newly minted WHC title. It would very disappointing if Cody ends up winning it and they present it as a focal point of his career.

Gonna laugh when they unify again. Cody wins new title and wins the rumble again and fights roman for all the gold.

<blockquote class="reddit-embed-bq" style="height:500px" data-embed-height="500"> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SCJerk/comments/12ysxln/fightful_plans_for_the_next_3_wrestlemanias/">Fightful: Plans for the next 3 Wrestlemanias leaked (knowing Vince)</a><br> by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/ShadyWolf">u/ShadyWolf</a> in <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SCJerk/">SCJerk</a> </blockquote><script async="" src="https://embed.reddit.com/widgets.js" charset="UTF-8"></script>

:rofl:

<marquee>https://imagehost9.online-image-edit...81NlgwRMmI.gif</marquee>

This actually wouldn’t be the worst story in the world. I doubt it’s what they’re doing, but using this belt as a story to fuel the ultimate Roman/Cody is not the worst way about getting to that.

I’m not feeling Cody in that spot though. I think they’ve created this so don’t need to have him as the ultimate guy.

The more I think of the new belt, the "angrier" I get. Like, damn... ok if you want a new belt. Just call it something else and treat it with higher respect and prestige than the IC/US level, just don't pretend that it is supposed to be an "equal" to Reigns belt(s).

Now we are just back to two world titles where one is clearly on the top guy, while the other is several levels below and could be stuck on just about anyone because it doesn't really matter.

That was always the problem with the two belts. Very seldom were they actually "equal". They would go back and forth with "this one is the more important one" and it would just devalue winning either.

I didn't mind two world champions in those first 3 or 4 years of the brand split when brands were actually kept entirely separate and basically treated like their own promotion.

Once they started having people arbitrarily switching shows whenever it was convenient, they needed to merge the titles. Hilarious that the "World Heavyweight Title" continued for years after the brand split was killed off on TV, it reeked of midcard.

And there's no reason to expect they won't just have everyone appearing everywhere again.

The way Triple H talked about it, it could be presented as a different tier title to Roman’s. That it could be defended against anyone, anywhere, etc. kind of made it sound like it could just headline PPVs Roman isn’t on.

It sounds to me like they don’t plan on having Roman drop the belts anytime soon and they need a placeholder while he does whatever. Which means he’s gonna have it probably for at least another year. Probably more. Which sounds pretty awful tbf.

Could be. Or it could be misdirection and just build towards SummerSlam.

USA supposedly feel the World Heavyweight Title will be seen at second rate and want Roman and the Bloodline on Raw. But the internal feeling is that they were ticketed to be back on SmackDown because FOX is the bigger money deal and their highest rated show.

On top of that, the draft is said to be happening because the networks again requested unique rosters and no cross-promotion. Same line of thinking that led to the last few drafts.

So it's really no secret why WWE always end up re-merging rosters within a few months, because they pretty much can't win otherwise. The networks want unique rosters but then get ticked off if certain stars don't appear.

Rock must need another year to get into shape.

That's all well and good, just don't call it a world title. Call it by any other name and do the same thing.

I still like the idea of a Heritage title (borrowing from NXT UK). Have the matches be 2/3 falls where you have to pin and submit your opponent. Use the Winged Eagle with updated wordage. That can be your “workhorse” champion that defends against all comers. Feels like a solid way to establish someone.

1 out of 2 falls ONLY.

Remember a few years ago when Vince went mad for 2/3 falls matches on Raw. They’d go multiple segments with falls either side of breaks.

Such good shit.

So with more time to consider this new belt situation I’ve come to this conclusion; we know that HHH has been using 3 x Booker of the Year Tony Khan’s playbook and having exhausted who he can bring back for a debut he’s turned to TK’s next best booking tactics, making big announcements and introducing new championship belts.

Like in previous years, the draft is split into two separate draft pools.

Eligible to be drafted on Friday:

* Becky Lynch
* Raw Women’s Champion Bianca Belair
* The Bloodline (Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns, Solo Sikoa)
* Bobby Lashley
* Candice LeRae
* Chelsea Green and Sonya Deville
* Cody Rhodes
* Damage CTRL (Bayley, IYO SKY, Dakota Kai)
* Dexter Lumis
* Dolph Ziggler
* Drew McIntyre
* Edge
* Hit Row (Top Dolla, Ashante “Thee” Adonis, B-Fab)
* Imperium (WWE Intercontinental Champion GUNTHER, Ludwig Kaiser, Giovanni Vinci)
* Lacey Evans
* Matt Riddle
* Maximum Male Models (ma.cé, mån.sôör, Maxxine Dupri)
* The Miz
* Mustafa Ali
* Natalya
* The O.C. (AJ Styles, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, Michin)
* Omos and MVP
* Shinsuke Nakamura
* The Street Profits (Montez Ford, Angelo Dawkins)
* The Viking Raiders (Erik, Ivar, Valhalla)
* Select NXT Superstars

Eligible to be drafted on Monday:

* Akira Tozawa
* Alpha Academy (Otis, Chad Gable)
* Angel Garza and Humberto Carrillo
* Asuka
* WWE United States Champion Austin Theory
* Baron Corbin
* Braun Strowman and Ricochet
* The Brawling Brutes (Sheamus, Ridge Holland, Butch)
* Brock Lesnar
* Bronson Reed
* Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin
* Charlotte Flair
* Dana Brooke
* Elias
* Emma
* Johnny Gargano
* Judgment Day (Finn Balor, Damian Priest, Dominik Mysterio)
* Karrion Kross and Scarlett
* Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn
* LA Knight
* WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez
* The LWO (Rey Mysterio, Santos Escobar, Cruz Del Toro, Joaquin Wilde, Zelina Vega)
* The New Day (Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods)
* Nikki Cross
* Piper Niven
* SmackDown Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley
* Rick Boogs
* Riddick Moss
* Ronda Rousey and Shayna Baszler
* Seth "Freakin'" Rollins
* Shotzi
* Tamina
* Tegan Nox
* The Usos (Jimmy Uso, Jey Uso)
* Trish Stratus
* Xia Li
* Select NXT Superstars

The Bloodline only being Roman and Solo with the Usos having to be picked separately is kinda strange but ultimately feels like a red herring. Probably one of those deals where Monday rolls around and Roman "demands" the Usos get drafted to his show. Can't imagine the full group being split up before they properly finish up their story.

Rhea not listed with Judgment Day is weird and feels more likely to be telegraphing a split, otherwise why was she not just drafted with the rest of the group? I assume she's going to SmackDown, yeah they could always do another "belt swap" angle but not sure I see it when Bianca's got a year-long title reign going with the Raw title lineage. Logic aside I hope they don't split Rhea and Dom up.

Street Profits remain the most likely team to be abruptly split - with Montez presumably being on Raw to stay with Bianca and Angelo going to SmackDown. But I think keeping them together and doing a proper breakup angle makes more sense.

I’d be completely okay with the new World Title being used to elevate someone new entirely. Even someone like a Bron Breakker or my outside pick…Apollo Crews. Is being plugged into mid-card stuff going to do that much for them? When someone has got the tools, you might as well present them as a big deal (as long as you are committed to them).

A guy like Crews has a great look, an interesting background, can work, is quite young and isn’t completely useless as a talker. He’s done the mid-card thing, he’s worked with a bunch of the guys coming up, he can play a face or a heel. There’s no real “hunger” for it, but that could be a shock that jolts people into paying attention.

You can tie it into him getting advice from Roman at some point too.

I think the problem you are going to face with the belt is the new champion feeling less than, especially if they’ve lost to Roman in a big way already. While establishing the champion, maybe they should be an unknown quantity, so you can play with the idea that this guy could hypothetically be the spoiler for Roman Reigns down the line. Someone fresh also allows you to pivot off a bunch of stories with the talent on that roster who have likely already mixed in the upper levels. What’s Seth going to do as champion? Feud with Bobby Lashley?

Montez Ford, Dominik Mysterio, Chad Gable and Damian Priest are other names I’ll throw out there for the spot.

From the existing main event roster, I can see the path forward with Cody (this isn’t good enough for me), Edge (I finally made it again) or even a miracle return from John Cena or Randy Orton. I can kind of get behind Bobby Lashley too. Or Logan Paul if his new deal allows it. But I think a good pick would be Sami Zayn, especially if they can get it done in Saudi Arabia, because the “feel good” can carry it through.

Seth and Drew are bad picks imo. They’re just not hot enough in the spot and it feels like it’s been done. I know Seth’s thing is that Roman hasn’t beaten him properly, but it still feels a little flat. I’m fine with him as the other guy in the decider.

If the belt is truly around to stay, Cody is a mistake too. And they also need to come up with fresh stories around it that don’t revolve around The Bloodline and what they’re doing.

I could really get behind Bron Breakker in the spot. He’d be like Finn Balor in 2016. Just smash him over and become “the guy” on Raw. He can defend the belt at NXT Battleground. If crowds boo him, roll with it. If they cheer him because he’s fresh, run with that too.

Have Rhea win it.

This is my problem for every draft when they split teams up.

Street Profits are listed as a team, yet they will get drafted one at a time. Zero logical reason to only draft one when you can draft both.

Yep. And they’ve doubled down this year by splitting some teams in the pool and not others only for the inevitable splitting of some of the teams.

I always hate how they split teams like that. The only thing that slightly smooths it over in my mind is if the wrestlers have the agency, so drafting them as singles forces that split in the team. But then it takes the pressure off the other show to draft the other person.

It would not shock me to see Montez Ford end up on Raw and Angelo Dawkins end up on SmackDown.

The only splits I can see are Roman & Solo Sikoa being separate from The Usos (there’s #1 right there) and Rhea Ripley being separate to Judgment Day. I think it’s pretty likely we’ll get The Usos and Judgment Day on Raw.

Judgement Day going to SD, will end up feuding with The Bloodline. Imperium to Raw. They are protecting Gunther almost like Roman. Lets him have a run at the new world title instead of having to feed him to Reigns.

I haven't watched Smackdown in forever. Hopefully they produce a good show.

Night 1:

Guessing Roman, Cody, Seth, Theory, Omos, Becky for SD in and Drew, Edge, Imperium, Nakamura, Bianca to RAW.

I'm genuinely excited for this show. I hope they stick to the roster split this time around.

Kind of weird they are going up against the NFL draft if the rosters are not going into effect until May 8th anyways.

So this confirms the fate of the World Heavyweight Championship.

I'm already wrong lol

Also, why would the Smackdown fans cheer for Raw picks?? :rofl:

lol Bianca and Rhea title swap time.

LOL why, every fucking year!

Looks like Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley are going to exchange the belts.

Round One:

SD - Roman/Solo/Heyman

RAW - Cody

SD - Bianca

RAW - Becky Lynch

Looks like Lynch and Rollins are going to stay on RAW.

Interesting keeping Cody and Seth on the same show

The giant screen looks "somewhat pixelated" up close.

Guessing Street Profits to SD as well

Can't believe they're still calling Pete Dunne "Butch" :nono:

LA Knight (and LWO) both need to start winning matches, the crowd really is into both

Ummm...did Belair just say that she's glad to be Smackdown women's champion?

OMG! LA Knight looks good.

Boring way to draft, imo. Need some pizzazz out there

I miss the old draft lottery format. Felt more engaging like the Royal Rumble tumbler.

nice

LA Knight finally won a match!

RVD!

Wish Michael Hayes was in a neon pink onesie

Whoa! RVD :eek:

Street Profits to SD

Imperium to RAW, called that one.

RVD looks great for his age.

Theory going to SD for sure now.

Edge to SD

Riddle staying on RAW

Round Two:

SD - Street Profits

RAW - Imperium

SD - EDGE

RAW - Matt Riddle

Is the draft fun to watch live? All they’re doing is reading names. That can’t be too exciting to see in person.

Guessing this means another Roman/Edge feud

Please keep Edge and Judgment Day on different shows

Whoa! I thought Strowman was concussed.

Ay lmao

Strowman taking an awkward fumble.

Holy $h!t at the dive by Dawkins :eek:

Teddy Long revealing the Monday Night RAW draft picks feels wrong.

Looks like Bobby Lashley is winning the United States Championship at Backlash.

Lashley to Smackdown is great, but that means Raw actually picked Riddle before Lashley lol