Before I go into anything, I want to first off introduce myself. My name is Neil Bhatia, and I’ve been blogging for about three years now (the link to my current site is at the bottom of this post). I’m currently a student at George Mason University, and I’ve been a wrestling fan since, well, the Attitude Era. I’ve followed wrestling religiously ever since, but only just recently did I combine that passion on my site with another passion of mine… writing. So lo and behold, by sheer luck the webmaster of XHeadlines caught a glimpse of some of my WWE-related thoughts/rants on my site, and, luckily for me, was drunk enough to offer me a column here.
So here I am now, and hopefully I’ll be able to keep you guys up-to-date on the latest happenings of the WWE.
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First, the results (italic selections are from the online supplemental draft held two days after the live draft on RAW):
Drafted to RAW:
- CM Punk
- Kane
- Batista
- Rey Mysterio
- Michael Cole
- Kofi Kingston
- Layla
- Matt Striker
- Chuck Palumbo
- Deuce
- Jamie Noble
Drafted to Smackdown!:
- Jeff Hardy
- Jim Ross
- Mr. Kennedy
- Umaga
- Triple H
- Carlito
- Shelton Benjamin
- Maria
- Brian Kendrick
- D.H. Smith
- Big Daddy V
Drafted to ECW:
- Matt Hardy
- Mark Henry
- Finlay
- Hornswaggle
- Super Crazy
And now, the review…
Aside from the very first pick, the first couple selections didn’t do much for me, as none of them were true shockers.
Batista going to RAW? Great, but also obvious. Jeff Hardy to Smackdown? Of course they were moving him there; they needed somebody the fans could connect with on that show to get it headed in the right direction again. CM Punk to RAW and Umaga to Smackdown, like the Batista selection, were also both pretty much stone-cold locks. But things got interesting afterwards…
Kane going to RAW was a BIG surprise since, after all, he is the ECW champion.
Good ol’ JR trading seats with Michael Cole was another nice surprise. It didn’t even look like JR, one veteran employee you’d think they’d inform beforehand about getting moved, knew about the selection. It didn’t stop there though.
Mr. Kennedy, one of the “blue-chippers” of the WWE, got drafted to Smackdown. Not even five seconds later, Triple H was ALSO drafted to Smackdown.
So what does this mean for the WWE? Well, they are obviously putting a helluva effort into transforming Smackdown, the most disappointing of the three brands, into an equivalent, if not better brand than RAW. The timing isn’t sheer coincidence either, as Smackdown is soon making the move to MyNetworkTV (a better network for their target audience).
But I’m starting to wonder if the WWE put too many eggs into Smackdown’s basket and now left RAW with a raw deal (harty harrr harr)… My brother, who is just a big a fan of the WWE as I am, said he’d now just watch Smackdown, and never watch RAW again.
If you take a look at the changes, you can’t really blame him. Three big-time fan favorites – including his favorite, Mr. Kennedy – are moving to Smackdown (Hardy, Kennedy, HHH), while only one mega-star is moving over to RAW (Batista). Rey Mysterio, another one of Raw’s selections, is far too much of an injury-risk to consider the draft as having even been even close to equal for the two main brands, since he tends to spend more time on crutches than he does in the ring. And even if he does stay healthy, he can’t possibly be in the picture for a heavyweight title the way HHH and Kennedy will be on Smackdown because of all the more-prominent wrestlers ahead of him. CM Punk, I will admit though, is a wrestler on the cusp of super-stardom, but even he is not quite over with the fans yet.
Besides what I now see as too much talent on Smackdown, I didn’t have any other problems. I’m actually now craving the possibilities of the endless number of potential new rivalries: Batista-Cena, Edge-HHH, Edge-Jeff Hardy, Orton-Batista, Mysterio-CM Punk, CM Punk-Cena, Kennedy-HHH, Kennedy-Hardy, Kennedy-Edge, Batista-Y2J, Mysterio-Cena… I really could go on-and-on.
Hopefully the writers will pluck some showdowns out of that list and give us more bang for our buck!
Regarding the “accident” Vince McMahon has, I HOPE it turns into a whodunit situation. They better not fuck it up though and give us some lame ending the way they did the last time McMahon had a significant storyline (cough cough Hornswaggle).
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Thanks for reading! I’m looking forward to bringing you guys a column you’ll enjoy (hopefully) a few times a week. If you’d like, you can check out my own personal blog, ‘Wrestling and Poker’, at the following link:
http://www.kgblovesoreos.com
