WWE Draft Results and Thoughts - April 15, 2009

Welcome to the "well, they loaded up Raw and dismantled the show with a shaky network" edition of The Wrestling List. Not really many surprises in the draft with WWE making Raw a priority and making Smackdown not one with My Network TV not on very solid ground. Let's get on to Raw and the happenings.

WWE announced that they set a company record for live gate revenue with WrestleMania 25 bringing in $6.9 million in revenue. WWE.com had over 100 million page views on the Monday after WrestleMania. That is incredible!!!!

Raw was a three hour show with all three brands on the show. Draft picks were given out depending on winners of matches. Each wrestler that won would win a pick for their brand. So, I'll just run this from top to bottom as far as how the picks played out. First was Rey Mysterio (Raw) taking on Evan Bourne (ECW). Fun match with Rey winning with the 619 and splash. Raw gets the first draft pick of the night which turns out to be MVP bringing the US title with him. Next is Kane (Raw) taking on Brian Kendrick (Smackdown). Squash match with Kane hitting the chokeslam for the win. Raw gets another pick which turns out to be The Big Show. At this point, I'm thinking that the dismantling of Smackdown is underway!! That brings us to the women's match with Melina, Mickie James, and Kelly Kelly (Raw) taking on Michelle McCool, Maryse, and Natalya (Smackdown). The finish had Mickie jumping off the top rope and catching a boot from Michelle that knocked her out. Michelle got the win and Smackdown got their first pick of the night. Going to Smackdown is Melina and also the Women's championship. Champion vs. champion match next with World champion John Cena (Raw) taking on ECW champion Jack Swagger (ECW) with two picks on the line. Cena caught Swagger's springboard out of the corner and put him into the adjustment. Cena then won with the STF. Raw gets two more picks which turns out to be Matt Hardy and WWE champion Triple H. I just laughed at this point thinking what is Smackdown going to have left by the end of this show??!! Edge attacked Cena after the match but Cena was able to fight him off. Next is a sure win for Smackdown when Santino Marella (Raw) takes on The Great Khali (Smackdown). Beth and Rosa arrived at the beginning of the match with them saying that they had talked to Vickie about an added stipulation. If San tino lost, Santina would be a guest on the Khali kiss cam. The match was a squash and Smackdown got another pick. The next pick for them was Money In The Bank winner, CM Punk. I would like to say that I called the next match and how the picks would play out. The Miz (ECW) with John Morrison taking on Kofi Kingston (Raw). Long match which had John Morrison getting involved at the end and nailing Kofi. The ref saw it and it was a DQ. The pick for Raw was The Miz. Miz and Morrison gave their goodbyes and embraced. Then, Miz attacked Morrison as he was mad that his interference cost him to be moved. Next was the 15 man multi-brand battle royal with two picks on the line. Here were the participants. For Raw: MVP, Cryme Tyme, Mike Knox, and Big Show. For ECW: Finlay, Tyson Kidd, Burchill, Mark Henry, and Ortiz. For Smackdown: The Colons, R Truth, Chavo, and Edge. The battle royal came down to a final three of Henry, Big Show, and Edge with each brand being represented. Edge tried to make a deal against the big men and ended up getting chokeslammed by Big Show. Show and Henry went at it. Show ended up nailing Henry with the knockout punch and eliminated Henry. That brought it down to Edge and Show. Show charged at Edge who ducked and pulled the ropes. Show falls to the floor and Edge wins the draft battle royal for the second time in a row getting two picks for Smackdown. The picks were Kane and Chris Jericho. Christian was up next battling for ECW taking on Shelton Benjamin representing Smackdown. Christian got the win when he hit the killswitch. This gave ECW their first and only pick of the night which was Kozlov. Geez and ugh. Thanks for nothing there. Next match was between two recent draft picks as Matt Hardy (Raw) battled CM Punk (Smackdown). Jeff Hardy did a run in and attacked Matt which gave a DQ win to Matt. Jeff was about to hit the swanton on Matt but Matt took off and avoided it. Jeff then chased him out of there. So, Raw gets Maryse with the pick and that also brings the Divas championship. Both women's titles are evened out. Chris Jericho (Smackdown) takes on Tommy Dreamer (ECW). Jericho wins with a nasty looking codebreaker for the win. Smackdown gets Rey Mysterio and the Intercontinental championship. That was the last pick of the night. The other focus of the show was Batista, Triple H, and Shane McMahon all wanting a piece of Randy Orton. The three argued over it and Vickie made a match with the three of them taking on Priceless. The one that made the pin on the face team would get Orton next week. Orton was mad over this of course and got the match to include a stip for them as well. If Priceless won, they got a handicap match next week. The match was what you would expect. The three guys arguing over who would be in the ring to pick up the win. Batista had the win and then Shane broke up the count. They took each other out of the equation as Triple H hit the pedigree and got the win. He'll face Orton next week on Raw from the United Kingdom. Orton arrived at the end and faced off with the three in the ring.

Other notes from Raw. The dismantling of Smackdown just got to be humorous during the first half of the show. I was just thinking that you have to have someone draw on that show. I just thought of this but isn't Natalya more of a ECW talent now than Smackdown? Kind of weird with her being in that women's match battling for Smackdown. JR's line at Michael Cole of Cole having a vintage stamp collection got a laugh out of me. Glad that everyone else has picked up on the "vintage" everything lines from Cole. JR also got a good shot in on Lawler when Lawler got lost on who Mike Knox was. JR pointed out that he was one of the Raw guys and said way to know your talent. What was with the "if Dreamer is a legend then so is the Brooklyn Brawler" line from Todd Grisham??!! I wonder if that was a fed line to him or what. I thought that was a ridiculous comparison. Poor Josh Mathews gets a nose bleed just as the show goes on the air. Then, he obviously had Vince yelling in his ear about it as well. Great to see Chief Jay Strongbow in the house in Atlanta. Speaking of Atlanta, I always get WCW memories when they are in town. I'm glad that they pointed out that the unprettier move by Christian is now called the killswitch cause I hadn't picked up on the name change.

That brings us to the supplemental draft which took place today on WWE.com. Here are the happenings starting with the 13th pick:
13. Kennedy to Raw
14. Shad of Cryme Tyme to Smackdown
15. Alicia Fox to Smackdown
16. Primo Colon to Raw
17. Mike Knox to Smackdown
18. Ezekiel Jackson to ECW
19. Nikki Bella to Raw
20. Candice Michelle to Smackdown
21. Zack Ryder to ECW
22. Chavo Guerrero to Raw
23. Ricky Ortiz to Smackdown
24. Layla to Smackdown
25. Hornswoggle to Raw
26. DH Smith to ECW
27. John Morrison to Smackdown
28. Carlito to Raw
29. Natalya to ECW
30. Festus to Raw
31. JTG of Cryme Tyme to Smackdown
32. Dolph Ziggler to Smackdown
33. Brian Kendrick to Raw
34. Charlie Haas to Smackdown
35. Hurricane Helms to ECW
36. Brie Bella to Raw
Basically, the happenings have the unified tag team champions, The Colons, moving to Raw. With that team switching, Cryme Tyme goes to Smackdown. Kendrick and Zeke have been split up. Kennedy switches brands again. Morrison gets a singles move over to Smackdown. Natalya gets moved to ECW which is where she has been the most anyway except for her suddenly being involved on the Smackdown side of the women's match on Raw.

Ok, on to my thoughts on the overall draft. They loaded up Raw obviously as far as star power goes. Smackdown still got a lot of good workers added to the mix. Not much changed with ECW. I am concerned about several talents moving over over to Raw. Matt Hardy was a top heel on Smackdown but I worry that he'll get lost in the mix on Raw. The Miz without Morrison on Raw just seems like a really bad mix to me. I am afraid that he may turn into a squash match talent. However, Morrison on Smackdown should mean big things for him. Both major titles are on the same brand with the WWE and World titles.

I didn’t really give my thoughts last week on the Hall Of Fame ceremony. I just recapped it without much opinion. My opinion of the overall show was mostly disappointment. WWE’s restrictions on speech length really hurt this show. The memories of these ceremonies over the years are the incredible stories that are told. Because of the hurried up speeches, we didn’t get to hear any of this stuff. The talent had to stay straight on course with their speeches and not have any time for stories. From what I have heard, it does sound WWE agrees that the Hall Of Fame wasn’t strong this year and because of that. If WWE really wants to get the show recorded for the TV special, they need to start it earlier in the afternoon. They probably hurt their buys on the WrestleMania DVD with rushing the Hall Of Fame. They count on a lot of fans doubledipping on WrestleMania so they’ll buy it again to get the Hall Of Fame ceremony. Because of the rushed speeches, I saw mostly all of the ceremony with very little of it cut out and won’t be buying the DVD. I think they’ll learn from this all next year.

WWE Superstars premieres tomorrow night on WGN at 7pm central time. The announced match for the show is The Undertaker taking on Matt Hardy. Just wild to have that show back.

I watched the E:60 special on Vince McMahon and WWE last night on ESPN. Very well produced segment. Nothing really new out of the interview. Nice to see the show give Vince and WWE a lot of credit for what they do business wise. Jeremy Schaap also talked to Stephanie McMahon as well and she came across very well in the interview. The show also featured a behind the scenes look at a creative meeting leading up to WrestleMania 25. If you see the show replayed, give the story a viewing as it is worth checking out.

That is it for this week. Wishing all of you a great week!! Take care and God bless!!