Wednesday, April 28, 2010

2010 WWE Draft & Extreme Rules Analysis


It's been quite a week for the WWE Universe, with the Extreme Rules Pay-Per-View airing on Sunday night, and then the WWE Draft taking place Monday night, as well as Tuesday for the supplemental draft. You can view the draft results here.

Let's start with Extreme Rules. There were no major shockers on this card. Some speculations were that Batista would be gone after the Last Man Standing match, but as we saw on Raw, he's still in the picture, and will have a third match against Cena at "Over the Limit" the next PPV with the WWE Title on the line again. Many have called Cena's Extreme Rules win cheap. He used duct tape to tape Batista's legs around the ringpost and The Animal couldn't stand up. Brains over brawn? You decide.

Extreme Rules gave us a new Womens Champion as Beth Phoenix defeated Michelle McCool. Also, a night later on Raw The Hart Dynasty defeated ShowMiz for the Unified tag titles. If I were to pick a surprise from Extreme Rules it would be JTG's win over Shad, but that's really not a huge win either way. It set up JTG's move over to Raw so he can lose and help put other guy's over, or maybe be Ted Dibiase's new "Virgil" as R-Truth put it last night. Some have speculated Dibiase will align himself with Ezekiel Jackson.

Speaking of Raw, the 3-hour show desperately needed a guest host Monday night. Having Cena come out to the ramp and do his mock phone call with someone from WWE HQ was rather lame. Cena's improv skills are still lacking, but he's still popular with many fans, and will probably never leave Raw in any draft for the next five years. Still they could have used a good moderator guest host. Who was setting up the various Raw vs Smackdown matches? Or was it the "WWE Brass" who arranged them all prior to the show?

As for the draft, Raw clearly came away with more bigtime star power, but Smackdown may be developing some of the rising stars into major talent. Edge made an immediate impact on Raw when he speared Orton during a #1 Contender Triple Threat match. Appears those former Rated RKO partners will be in a feud again. However, seeing Jericho and Big Show drafted and hearing the fake excitement from the Raw or Smackdown commentators was a bit much. We've seen both these guys show up on Raw or Smackdown for the past several years so those aren't groundbreaking picks.

WWE held its Round 2 of the draft via WWE.com. I was part of the WWE Universe live chat involving The Fink, Melina, Michelle McCool and others from the Universe about the Supplemental draft on Tuesday. During that live chat you could see fans saying that Smackdown was screwed over. Also fans were upset over having tickets for Smackdown, yet seeing Edge and Jericho drafted away, or Mickie James being released. Some of the picks in the Supplemental draft included Ezekiel Jackson to Raw, Great Khali to Raw, Natalya to Raw, Cody Rhodes to Smackdown and Chris Masters to Smackdown.

It's funny, but shouldn't the guys on WWE NXT just get drafted between the two shows? Does anyone really expect WWE to just dispose of all the guys involved in that competition except just one "next superstar"? That wasn't the case in many of the Diva Search competitions, as even first round eliminated females managed to come back to WWE in some capacity and do well with the company.

While we're on the topic of NXT, they had a competition last night to sell programs to people in the audience. Definitely not needed and wasted some valuable TV time, but fans got to put their mugs on TV too. Wade Barrett tweeted the following after he just walked off with a wad of cash that he was supposed to use as change. He chose to not even compete and left with "Mr. McMahon's money":

"Just for the record, I left NXT with $100 of Vince's cash in my sky rocket. The other rookies all left empty handed. Who's the winner now?"

- Just for the record Wade, you probably would be more of a winner to win the NXT competition and get a WWE contract instead of just $100 of change from merchandise.

Back to the draft moves, it does seem Raw got a lot more talent out of the draft, but I can also see a new major champ coming sometime for Smackdown. Kofi Kingston and Christian both seem primed for that role. Christian was able to defeat and successfully defend the ECW Championship against Jack Swagger many times, and could be a contender. Kofi Kingston started getting into the title picture on Raw a while back and had a good run against Orton. We could see Kofi or Christian as the next World Heavyweight Champion later this year.

How do you feel about the WWE Draft 2010 results? Feel free to comment below!

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It seems apparent that Raw is becoming the A list show for all the top superstars and Smackdown is becoming the B list show.
This seems like a good thing now some overlooked superstars can have their chance in the spotlight on Smackdown.
Im a little disappointed that Striker didnt get draffted to Raw, to me hes the best commentator around.
And for people that are disappointed that smackdown lost a bunch of star power, everyone knows that superstars just got to which ever brand they pleas. Like Batista, wasnt he on smackdown before his feud with Cena and now hes magically on Raw.
And speaking of Cena I finally realized why their are people who hate him so much. Hes got great charisma but hes lame, and hes just a billboard for WWE doing whatever they want him to.
I thought the draft show was great, they had alot of good matches throughout the show, some of the best in recent memory. Im disappointed that Batista is the number 1 contender again. Like anyone thinks hes going to win the title off Cena so soon. They had a good opportunity to begin a fresh feud but no.

My thoughts on why so many big names are on Raw. Ratings and TNA. Im personally not a fan of TNA their show is extremely messy and lame, I highly doubt the WWE should worry about them becoming bigger.

One last thing about the PG rating, I dont think its a bad thing, im mean they can keep it clean and not try and kill each other wrestling, but I dont think they should go out of their way to keep it clean, like we someone bleeds it rarely happens now and when it does they instantly want hide it and clean it up, I understand their reasons why, AIDS and all that good stuff. But dont make the PG so strict.

April 29, 2010 at 4:21 PM  

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