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WWE Draft 2019 has reached its conclusion. With the last group of additional picks being announced on WWE show "The Bump", most of the current Superstars have finally found their places on RAW and SmackDown rosters.
With the whole fanbase buzzing about this event, trying to predict every significant pick, not many of us could notice some important drafts-related hints made by WWE itself. Weeks before it took place, the company was constantly giving us clues for certain Superstars getting ready to switch brands. With all of my guesses being confirmed on the last episodes of SmackDown and RAW, I suggest taking a closer look at how WWE imperceptibly revealed to us some of their most recent roster moves.
#3 The Street Profits
The Street Profits have already shown up at backstage on RAW as early as this year’s July. Surprisingly enough, they haven’t yet got their in-ring debut on the red brand and were barely featured in any proper storylines there.
Cutting backstage promos about WWE’s current programming for more than three months helped The Street Profits gain enough recognition from their main roster audience and polish their mic delivery and character work even further. It was widely admitted though that Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford should have been doing much more than that in this company. Their full-fledged call-up felt like a matter of very short time.
The Street Profits had lost their NXT Tag Team Championships to The Undisputed Era’s Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish back in August. Since then, they have appeared on the black and gold brand shows much more scarcely and yet continued to regularly show up on RAW without these titles.
An important thing to note was their championship rematch against O’Reilly and Fish on the 2 October edition of NXT on USA Network. Dawkins and Ford had lost this chance to recapture their gold and haven't appeared before the Full Sail University crowd ever since. This loss and its lack of storyline follow-up for The Street Profits on NXT clearly signified that WWE was ready to finally pull the trigger on their full-fledged call-up during this year's draft.
The Street Profits, as was expected, were drafted to RAW this Friday Night in the fourth round of picks. They have even seemingly started a feud with "The O.C." on the last episode of RAW.
#2 Aleister Black
Since the Superstar Shake-up 2019 to the point of the 2019's Draft, Aleister Black has been a part of the SmackDown roster. His brief tag team run with Ricochet aside, not many WWE fans would disagree that ‘The Dutch Destroyer’ hasn't achieved much on the blue brand. Being a very talented and well protected Superstar, Aleister Black is yet to truly thrive on WWE’s main roster.
On the last pre-draft episode of RAW, as a part of the “Draft Showcase”, Black returned to the television with a backstage promo and a short squash match against The Singh Brothers. He even debuted his new impressive-looking submission called "Dark Ritual" in that match.
While, clearly, not every performer featured in the “Draft Showcase” was supposed to switch brands, some of them still were. Reminding the audience about Aleister Black just before the Draft and even debuting his new move in front of the RAW crowd could have served as signs of an upcoming roster move for ‘The Dutch Destroyer’.
It was also rumored that the head or RAW creative Paul Heyman thinks very highly of Aleister Black. It was only natural that he would welcome the former NXT Champion on his 'team'.
Black was drafted to RAW in the second round of picks this Monday. He easily defeated Eric Young in his first match as a part of "team red".
#1 Drew Gulak
Far from the most discussed one, Drew Gulak was still one of the safest and most prepared options for WWE to call up to the main roster in 2019's Draft.
On the October 9th episode of NXT, Gulak lost his NXT Cruiserweight Championship to Lio Rush in a very impressive match. Surprisingly enough, Drew stayed away from any further claims to this title. He showed his respect to the new champion and put the entire Cruiserweight division over in a post-match segment and an interview later that night. Some may even say that it could have added certain babyface vibes to his character.
“Philadephia Stretcher” has done pretty much everything there was to do on 205 Live. His championship reign there was nothing short of impressive. In the last two episodes of the show, he teamed up with Tony Nese to take on Danny Burch and Oney Lorcan and suffered losses in both of their matches.
Decisively finishing these two storylines that involved Gulak, WWE almost gave out to us their plans to finally call the Former NXT Cruiserweight Champion up.
Drew was announced as a part of the Draft 2019 back on the first night of this event. Unfortunately, he was not picked by RAW or SmackDown representatives on last week’s edition of SmackDown. Later, WWE revealed that “Philadelphia Stretcher” was drafted to the Blue brand as one of its additional picks.
Not undermining how useful would it be for the 205 Live roster if Drew Gulak stayed there and kept working with its young upstarts, now it is time for him to thrive on a larger scene as a part of Friday Night SmackDown.
