That Was Then, Is This Too? 04.27.10: Draft Analysis Special

Welcome to yet another installment of That Was Then, Is This Too?, the column that looks for parallel lines in all the right places. I stayed up until 5 AM local time to bring you this article, so I’m going straight to Banner 2.0.

With WrestleMania’s fallout finally settling down and the dust settling all around us, WWE looks to shake things up in the annual draft, which determines where various WWE superstars will be appearing for at least the following years (unless of course the writers decide to move a wrestler across the brands somewhere along the way for any number of arbitrary reasons). Still, even with the lines between brands more nonexistent than ever, the annual draft is exciting to watch simply because it’s the night where several months worth of potential feuds all take shape at once. With each new pick there’s a whole list of potential feuds, and getting drafted to the right brand at the right time can make or break a career.

John Morrison and R-Truth formed a makeshift tag team to challenge Big Show and The Miz at WrestleMania, and have been teaming together ever since. Both men spent 2009 in the blue brand’s midcard. John Morrison had a very good year for himself, with an Intercontinental title run and a string of impressive matches against Rey Mysterio. R-Truth had a less impressive run, but showed enough unique athleticism and charisma to make sure the fans didn’t forget about him. Together, they form an exciting and athletic tag team that could have some good matches with the newly crowned Hart Dynasty. In the long run I expect the team to split quietly though, and in that case Morrison definitely seems to have more potential to move up on the card than R-Truth.

Edge is coming into the red brand with a lot of momentum from his recent face turn, but also holding the dubious honour of being one of the few Royal Rumble winners and babyface challengers to fail to capture the title at WrestleMania. He started off the 2009 season by divorcing from Vickie Guerrero. After repeatedly failing to capture the title, he went into a promising makeshift tag team with Chris Jericho, only to get severely injured. He returned to win the rumble as a babyface, but failed to win the title. He immediately turned heel on his return to Raw, which, while a little soon, will probably work out well for him in the long run.

The final pick for the red brand is Chris Jericho. After a great run with the tag team titles on SmackDown, he found himself with the world heavyweight championship seemingly just to lose it to a returning Edge at WrestleMania. He defied the odds by retaining to WrestleMania, only to lose it immediately afterwards to Money in the Bank winner Jack Swagger. He follows Edge to Raw, although after losing the cage match at Extreme Rules he could just as easily move on to chase after John Cena as continue his feud with Edge.

The first truly important pick of the night saw Big Show head back to SmackDown after a year on the red brand. He was coming off a year spent feuding with John Cena and Kofi Kingston before making a surprising impact in the tag team division as Edge’s replacement in the team with Chris Jericho. After losing the tag team titles to D-Generation X, he recovered surprisingly well by pairing with The Miz and winning the titles back. He lost the tag team titles prior to being drafted to the blue brand, and he seemingly turned face by puncing out his partner during the commmercial break.

Kofi Kingston is a product of the WWECW developmental system, going from the now-defunct C-show straight to the red brand. Despite winning the United States championship, he never really gained any kind of traction and seemed to get lost in the shuffle like so many other Raw midcarders. Over on the blue brand he’d definitely have some more breathing room. The same goes for Christian, who is slowly approaching the point where it’s now or never for him as a main event level challenger. Becoming a main eventer seems much easier on the blue brand.

That Was Then…

2009 was a very good year to be drafted from Raw to SmackDown. The two people who benefited from their move more than anyone else were CM Punk, who was holding his second Money in the Bank briefcase at the time, and Chris Jericho. Both were in somewhat of a limbo on Raw, spending time in the main event scene without really being considered main eventers. Chris Jericho was coming off a tremendous feud with Shawn Michaels, and had most recently feuded with several WWE Hall of Famers. However, while the feud itself was great, there seemed to be very little for him to do once he wrapped it up. His move to SmackDown changed all that. He went into a brief feud for the Intercontinental championship, trading it with Rey Mysterio in a series of excelent PPV matches. After losing to Mysterio for a final time at The Bash, Jericho weaseled his way into a title match with Edge. They easily won the unified tag team championships, and were set for a great run only to have Edge severely injure himself. Fortunately Jericho quickly found a replacement in Big Show, who wasn’t really doing much of anything at the time, and the team turned out to work surprisingly well.

CM Punk meanwhile was holding the Money in the Bank briefcase, but it didn’t really mean much, considering how very weak his first run as world heavyweight champion had been. Fortunaly for him SmackDown held a dream opponent for him in Jeff Hardy. In his feud with the Charismatic Enigma, CM Punk finally got to tap into the heel side of his Straight Edge gimmick, which had first helped him break out in Ring of Honor in his feud against Raven. Jeff Hardy eventually left the company, but CM Punk would go on to expand on his current character, dialing it up even further until he was more of a cult leader than he had been at any time during his independent run. While he hasn’t held the world heavyweight title in a while, his Straight Edge Society is still on TV pretty much every week, and he’s currently involved in a great feud with Rey Mysterio.

Rey Mysterio had been a fixture on the blue brand from the moment he made his debut in 2002, as WWE hoped to utilize him both to anchor the cruiserweight division and draw in the Latino audience. With Rey having left the cruiserweight division (and the plug eventually getting pulled on that division) and the Latino audience becoming less important, WWE was free to move him to Raw. His Raw run was mostly unspectacular, with his only achievement of note being the completion of the WWE triple crown at WrestleMania XXV. When he moved back to SmackDown however, he immediately moved into a feud with Chris Jericho. From there on he went into a feud with the young up-and-comer Dolph Ziggler. Before the title change could take place however, Rey Mysterio found himself suspended under the WWE’s wellness policy and the title was moved to John Morrison in stead. Morrison and Ziggler feuded for a while, but Ziggler never won the title. Mysterio would return pretty much straight into a Batista heel turn, and he would be the firs twrestler to fall victim to the newly unleased Animal.

The moves to Raw generally didn’t work out so well for most people not called Triple H. A prime example of this was Matt Hardy. Matt had turned heel on his brother Jeff in the previous year, and the two had clashed in an Extreme Rules match at WrestleMania XXV that was mostly memorable for its insane finish. On Raw however, he didn’t accomplish much outside of using a cast that he had gotten as a result of a broken hand he suffered at Backlash as a weapon. He suffered an injury to his abdominal wall at a Superstars taping, and was moved back to SmackDown in a trade. After turning face again by helping his brother retain the world heavyweight championship, Matt would go on to achieve absolutely nothing.

When MVP moved from SmackDown to Raw, he took the United States championship with him. He would hold the title until June 6th, when helost it to Kofi Kingston. From there on he would go on to form a tag team with the newly turned Mark Henry. They feuded extensively with both the team of Big Show and Chris Jericho and the team of Big Show and The Miz, but they were never truly credible challengers against either team.

The Miz was one of the few people who did manage to make something of himself being drafted to Raw. He started off pretty hot, feuding with John Cena, who was still recovering from the brutal beating he had received at the hands of Edge and Big Show. From there he would go on to win the United States championship, and he was the only member of the Raw roster to win his match at Bragging Rights when he pinned former tag team partner and intercontinental champion John Morrison. He retained his title in a minor against MVP before moving back to the tag team division, partnering up with Big Show to win the tag team titles from D-Generation X.

All in all, it seems that the people going from red to blue are a lot better off than the people going from blue to red. Jericho, Mysterio and Punk have all been involved in excelent feuds, and have certainly gotten more exposure than they would have gotten on Raw. Meanwhile, the only Raw draftee discussed who has actually moved forward with his career appears to be The Miz. With that being said, will this year’s draftees break the trend, or will we get another year of SmackDown talent flourishing while Raw talent languishes?

…Is This Too?

With things as they are now, it seems like this year’s draft is once again a case of SmackDown’s main event scene getting stripped while Raw’s main event scene becomes so full that most people get lost in the shuffle. However, I don’t think that things are nearly as bad here as they were in some years. Over on Raw, it seems that both Triple H and Batista might be gone, which would mean that only John Cena, Randy Orton and Sheamus are left. Meanwhile over on SmackDown, we have young Jack Swagger as champion, with Rey Mysterio, CM Punk and Undertaker as potential challengers. Now this might not seem like much, but what it means is that there are plenty of oppertunities for midcarders to move up in the world. Both Christian and Kofi Kingston have proven that they can work well with Jack Swagger, and they would make for interesting challengers. Big Show meanwhile is a proven commodity who could easily work with Jack Swagger in a short program while others are being built up as challengers. Of course to talk about the midcard, we’d have to wait for the supplemental draft which will take place next Wednesday.