5 harsh realities about the upcoming WWE Draft that nobody wants to talk about

The WWE Draft returns on October 11th for the second episode of Friday Night SmackDown on FOX and it will spill over to the October 14th episode of RAW on the USA Network. It's going to be interesting to see how the draft plays out this time - over 3 years after the first one.

We've never had a draft after that because it was replaced by the WWE Superstar Shake-Up - an annual post-WrestleMania roster change.

However, there seems to be a lot of anticipation and excitement about it because it presents a fresh direction and one that will be implemented as the number of months to WrestleMania 36 reduces.

WrestleMania 36, will of course, be the real determining factor over whether this draft is a flop or not, so it'll be fun to see what happens. However, we unfortunately cannot simply ignore the negatives and harsh realities of this draft, mainly with the fear of history repeating itself (which happens more often than not in WWE).

Here are a few harsh realities about this upcoming draft that people aren't talking about.

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#5. There really aren't many Superstars who need to change brands

Three women who should be on SmackDown

Here's one problem with the draft. The rosters have been set and there aren't many Superstars that need to change brands right now. In fact, there are a surprising number of Superstars with momentum on their side - more so than we're used to.

This creates a problem because when they do switch certain Superstars' brands, it ruins their momentum and they have to start from scratch, sometimes being unable to replicate the success they initially had.

That is one of the tricky aspects of brand switches.

#4. The Superstar Shake-Up of 2019 has been rendered useless

Was there any point of this?

The 2019 Superstar Shake-Up has officially been rendered the most useless brand-changing week in WWE history. It was meant to shake up the rosters as advertised, but they may have killed the purpose of it before they were even able to fully establish a new roster.

The first major problem had to do with the Wild Card rule. What's the point of assigning Superstars a brand when they can jump over to the opposite brand at any given time anyway?

Sure, there were a select few Superstars who hardly ever jumped brands (Seth Rollins and Shinsuke Nakamura, for example) and benefited from it, but overall, it seemed like the entire purpose of the Shake-Up was gone when they introduced the Wild Card rule.

Secondly, the rumors stated that WWE had done this shake up with the intention of the FOX move in mind, which probably explains massive brand changes such as Roman Reigns going to SmackDown Live.

However, the Wild Card rule felt like a way to get him on both shows and now that they're going to do another draft anyway, what was the purpose of the Shake-Up?

#3. What's stopping WWE from bringing back the Wild Card rule?

This was the dreaded moment...

The Wild Card rule was probably the worst creative decision that WWE took this year. The brand split was a tried and tested method that worked well and for a very good reason.

Obviously, it's a big relief that WWE is officially concluding the Wild Card rule, but it proved to be a lot more detrimental to the product than many people would have liked. In fact, even Seth Rollins was critical of it, saying:

"The Wild Card really muddled things up, to be honest with you,

Now you're seeing those guys every single week. It used to feel special when I see the New Day but now they're eating pancakes backstage every chance they get on Monday and I'm not a fan of that."

While the Wild Card rule won't be seen until WrestleMania, what exactly is stopping WWE from re-implementing the rule? While FOX does have a big say in the matter, if WWE gets impatient again, they can choose to bring back the Wild Card rule whenever they see fit.

We can't even put it past them to prevent that. But hopefully, we get many years of two separate brands.

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#2. Unfair NXT call-ups

Will we see an imbalance in the NXT roster

We highly doubt that WWE will do what they did the last draft - utilize six spots to call up NXT Superstars. The circumstances are vastly different this time around. NXT now has a live 2-hour show on the USA Network and they need a strong roster for a sustainable period before they're able to build up new stars to take their spot.

While that will take time, don't be surprised if WWE makes some important call-ups of Superstars who should not be leaving NXT anytime soon. If they do that, they may potentially send back a few Superstars in exchange, but even so, it needs to be a fair one.

NXT currently has a very strong roster with quite a few established talents - many of whom they simply can't afford to lose. But due to the nature of call-ups, we might see NXT gutted of some very big names and some underutilized Superstar go back down in exchange.

#1. WWE may gut one roster and significantly impact one show

Will RAW be gutted of its roster?

As mentioned, the biggest problem with the last draft was that WWE favored RAW over SmackDown and made sure to stack the roster with much better talent overall, probably justifying it to themselves that the longer show needs the better roster.

However, since the big money is coming from FOX and WWE needs to impress as much as possible, they will very likely bring over some of the biggest stars to SmackDown Live, making RAW suffer in the process.

This will be the opposite of what happened last time around, but a poor move nonetheless. Over-stacking SmackDown would be a huge mistake because, at the end of the day, it's still a two-hour show. Not all Superstars can be utilized in that space and WWE knows this.

While they ideally should find a way to strike balance in the two rosters, there's a very high chance that at least one roster is going to get gutted of its main talent and that brand may be RAW this time around. It's not something that people want to hear, but it will most likely happen regardless.

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