WWE reveals draft rules, list of celebrities set to appear, Preliminary draft pools announced

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cero2k
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WWE reveals draft rules, list of celebrities set to appear, Preliminary draft pools announced

Post by cero2k » Oct 10th, '19, 17:05

Source: f4wonline.com

Ahead of it kicking off tomorrow, WWE has revealed the rules for this year's draft:

Over 70 Superstars, as well as tag teams, are eligible for selection in this year’s WWE Draft
SmackDown will draft 30 Superstars, and Raw will select another 41 Superstars
Since SmackDown is a two-hour show and Raw is a three-hour show, for every two picks SmackDown makes, Raw will receive three
Tag teams will count as one pick unless FOX or USA Network specifically wants to pick only one Superstar from the team
Any undrafted Superstars will immediately be declared free agents and able to sign with the brand of their choosing
The draft will begin on tomorrow's SmackDown at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. It will then conclude with night two taking place on Monday's Raw at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado.

Tomorrow's SmackDown will open with Seth Rollins vs. Roman Reigns. Rollins is representing Raw in the match, while Reigns is representing SmackDown. The stipulation is that -- if Rollins wins -- Raw will get the first overall pick. SmackDown will get the first pick if Reigns wins.

When the draft was first announced, it was noted that personalities from FOX and NBCUniversal would be appearing across the two nights. WWE has revealed that the following list of celebrities will be making appearances:

Alex Rodriguez -- FOX MLB analyst
Michael Che & Colin Jost of "Saturday Night Live"
Christian Slater of "Mr. Robot"
Joe Buck & Troy Aikman -- NFL on FOX commentators
Jim Cramer of "Mad Money"
Kevin Burkhardt & Frank Thomas -- FOX MLB analysts
Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Jimmy Johnson & Tony Gonzalez -- FOX NFL Sunday
Ronde Barber, Charles Davis, Chris Spielman & Daryl Johnston -- FOX NFL analysts
Charissa Thompson, Michael Vick & Peter Schrager -- FOX NFL Kickoff
Rob Stone, Brady Quinn, Reggie Bush, Matt Leinart & Urban Meyer -- Big Noon Kickoff
Joel Klatt -- FOX College Football analyst
Dule Hill of USA’s “Psych” and “Suits”
James Roday of “Psych”
Marcus Lemonis of “The Profit”
Margaret Josephs & Melissa Gorga of “Real Housewives of New Jersey”
Rodney Harrison & Chris Simms -- Football Night in America
Rebecca Lowe, Robbie Mustoe & Kyle Martino -- Premier League Live
Post Wrestling's John Pollock reported on the role the celebrities will play: "The celebrities will be doing spots but not actually making the picks, they are said to be spots discussing strategy/analysis. Stephanie McMahon will be in the role of announcing all the picks like a league commissioner would."

Che and Jost were involved in a storyline with Braun Strowman earlier this year, with it leading to them being entrants in the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal on the WrestleMania 35 pre-show. Strowman won the match by last eliminating Che and Jost.

WWE is hyping that "For the first time, executives from FOX and USA Network have direct influence over the WWE Draft as it will determine the Superstars competing for either Raw or SmackDown."


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The draft will begin on tomorrow's SmackDown and then conclude on Monday's Raw. The draft pools are a list of wrestlers who are eligible to be selected on each night.

The pools are:

Night one (October 11 episode of SmackDown) --

Raw Women’s Champion Becky Lynch
Roman Reigns
The O.C. (United States Champion AJ Styles, Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson)
"The Fiend" Bray Wyatt
Drew McIntyre
Randy Orton
Sasha Banks
Ricochet
Braun Strowman
Bobby Lashley
Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross
Lacey Evans
The Viking Raiders (Erik & Ivar)
SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Revival (Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder)
Natalya
The Street Profits (Montez Ford & Angelo Dawkins)
Lucha House Party (Kalisto, Gran Metalik & Lince Dorado)
Cesaro
Kevin Owens
Humberto Carrillo
Akira Tozawa
Sin Cara
Eric Young
EC3
Chad Gable
Heath Slater
Drew Gulak
The B-Team (Bo Dallas & Curtis Axel)
Tamina

Night two (October 14 episode of Raw) --

Universal Champion Seth Rollins
WWE Champion Brock Lesnar
SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair
Titus O’Neil
Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura (with Sami Zayn)
Aleister Black
The New Day (Kofi Kingston, Big E & Xavier Woods)
Daniel Bryan
Bayley
Luke Harper
Erick Rowan
The Miz
Ali
King Corbin
Elias
Raw Tag Team Champions Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode
Samoa Joe
WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions The Kabuki Warriors (Asuka & Kairi Sane)
Rusev
Cedric Alexander
Rey Mysterio
R-Truth
Carmella
AOP (Akam & Rezar)
Heavy Machinery (Tucker & Otis)
Apollo Crews
Andrade
Liv Morgan
Jinder Mahal
Buddy Murphy
Mojo Rawley
No Way Jose
Dana Brooke
Shelton Benjamin
Curt Hawkins & Zack Ryder
The IIconics (Billie Kay & Peyton Royce)
Sarah Logan
Fire & Desire (Mandy Rose & Sonya Deville)
Drake Maverick


The wrestlers in the first pool are eligible to be drafted by Raw or SmackDown on night one, and the wrestlers in the second pool are eligible to be drafted by Raw or SmackDown on night two.

The rules for the draft and the list of FOX/NBC Universal personalities who will be appearing were also revealed today. Due to Raw being a three-hour show, the brand will pick 41 wrestlers in the draft. SmackDown will select 30 wrestlers. Tag teams will count as one pick "unless FOX or USA Network specifically wants to pick only one Superstar from the team."

WWE noted that "any undrafted Superstars will immediately be declared free agents and able to sign with the brand of their choosing."

Rollins vs. Reigns will open tomorrow's SmackDown, with Rollins representing Raw and Reigns representing SmackDown. The stipulation for the match is that Raw will get the first overall pick in the draft if Rollins wins, and SmackDown will get the first pick if Reigns wins.
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Re: WWE reveals draft rules, list of celebrities set to appear, Preliminary draft pools announced

Post by Serujuunin » Oct 10th, '19, 17:48

This.... makes a surprising amount of sense.

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Re: WWE reveals draft rules, list of celebrities set to appear, Preliminary draft pools announced

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 10th, '19, 18:56

A few thoughts:

1. If Raw gets three picks for every two that SD gets and SD is making 30 picks, shouldn't Raw wind up with 45, not 41?

2. This whole thing with the celebrities performing analysis is ridiculous because none of them have ever been portrayed as wrestling experts. When the NFL does their draft, they don't put f*cking actors on the air to give their in-depth analysis. They have actual football experts do it.

3. Having the brand-specific champions be available for selection feels very dumb, and at the very least demands an explanation in these rules for what will happen if the Raw Women's Champion gets drafted to Smackdown.

4. Steph's role does not fit at all. That sort of role makes sense when you've got a league of thirty teams picking rosters that will be in direct competition with each other. This is a draft between two factions that will be in indirect competition with each other. Having one person announce all of the picks makes it feel WAY too same-y and loses the distinction between the sides

Look... I don't want to see the brands feuding and bickering and I think the Fox vs. USA portrayal is the best way to portray this, but I do think we need different personalities to make the shows feel different. The way to do this isn't Steph announcing picks and droves of celebrities offering their scripted comments on it. The way to do this is to take two people with some TV presence and who feel like they are someone who has a vision for their show due to some sort of similar management experience. Someone who comes across like a sports team's general manager or the station manager at a TV station whose job it is to put together a lineup of programs that will draw the maximum possible viewers every week. And then put each of them in a war room with a team of people who feel like wrestling experts, especially playing on people's general knowledge without actually speaking the details that would break kayfabe. People like Road Dogg and Adam Pearce, Fit Finley, Michael Hayes, Albert, Sara Del Rey, and Eric Bischoff) mixed in with people who have a kayfabe sense of that (Teddy Long) and even throw in some random respected veterans who haven't actually felt like part of the establishment either on or off screen (Mark Henry, Beth Phoenix), and even throw in some Easter Eggs for those in the know (Ryan Ward, Gabe Sapolsky).

In fairness to WWE, it took me a LONG time to come up with some figureheads who could feel like people brought in by the networks (even if we all know that they really work for WWE), and I'm not sure that they are the best choices, but the people I would use for these roles would be J.J. Dillon and Jim Smallman. I wouldn't put them on TV all of the time or even most of the time. It would be a job they could do from home via social media fifteen weeks out of sixteen. But I do think that in order to create the feel that it's the networks making the decisions rather than the shadowy WWE cabal feel that WWE has had for the majority of the past two years, which has totally destroyed the current brand extension, we need new figureheads who feel like someone a network would bring in to be in charge of their show due to some form of past success (with Smallman you can do some video packages to tell his story).

5. I am utterly shocked that they think anyone will watch these shows when we can just get the results of the draft online and they're not advertising any real action. After reading this article, there was no doubt in my mind that watching these shows would be a waste of time.

6. The two different pools feels stupid at first glance, but the underlying kayfabe logic of it is that both networks would want their network's draft show to be watched, and without two pools, all of the big names would be picked on Smackdown and no one would care about the undercarders getting picked on Raw. Unfortunately, WWE is too self-conscious to ever explain this because doing so would expose that the whole reason for doing the draft on TV and especially doing it now is that it's a ratings ploy both shows, because when you think about it, the logical time to have this draft would have been BEFORE Smackdown debuted on Fox.

7. After being disappointed in how the time between the 2016 draft and the new brand split taking effect was handled, I wrote how disappointed I was because WWE had a perfect model for doing this right under their noses in the episode of Smackdown between the 2002 draft episode of Raw and that draft taking effect. Similarly, if WWE had watched the 2002 draft episode of Raw, they would have realized that what made that episode work as a television show was the importance of the event itself but rather the entertainment provided by the interactions- be they adversarial or comedic- between Vince, Flair, and the wrestlers they picked.
For this show, WWE appears to have completely excised that, replacing it with one singular voice for both sides in Stephanie McMahon, and then giving us a bunch of "analysis" from people who we're supposed to care about solely because they are on TV in capacities completely irrelevant to pro wrestling.
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Re: WWE reveals draft rules, list of celebrities set to appear, Preliminary draft pools announced

Post by cero2k » Oct 11th, '19, 09:41

Big Red Machine wrote: Oct 10th, '19, 18:56
3. Having the brand-specific champions be available for selection feels very dumb, and at the very least demands an explanation in these rules for what will happen if the Raw Women's Champion gets drafted to Smackdown.
This is totally a sword and wall thing, on one side, with so many championships, I guess they do have to address their placing, especially with the OC that is 3X1. But now we're gonna have the usual problem that they're going to coincidentally end with a perfect split of championships instead of one side hogging all the titles. You're gonna make champions look weak for being picked last or after certain non-champs or other titles.

4. Steph's role does not fit at all. That sort of role makes sense when you've got a league of thirty teams picking rosters that will be in direct competition with each other. This is a draft between two factions that will be in indirect competition with each other. Having one person announce all of the picks makes it feel WAY too same-y and loses the distinction between the sides

Look... I don't want to see the brands feuding and bickering and I think the Fox vs. USA portrayal is the best way to portray this, but I do think we need different personalities to make the shows feel different. The way to do this isn't Steph announcing picks and droves of celebrities offering their scripted comments on it. The way to do this is to take two people with some TV presence and who feel like they are someone who has a vision for their show due to some sort of similar management experience. Someone who comes across like a sports team's general manager or the station manager at a TV station whose job it is to put together a lineup of programs that will draw the maximum possible viewers every week. And then put each of them in a war room with a team of people who feel like wrestling experts, especially playing on people's general knowledge without actually speaking the details that would break kayfabe. People like Road Dogg and Adam Pearce, Fit Finley, Michael Hayes, Albert, Sara Del Rey, and Eric Bischoff) mixed in with people who have a kayfabe sense of that (Teddy Long) and even throw in some random respected veterans who haven't actually felt like part of the establishment either on or off screen (Mark Henry, Beth Phoenix), and even throw in some Easter Eggs for those in the know (Ryan Ward, Gabe Sapolsky).

In fairness to WWE, it took me a LONG time to come up with some figureheads who could feel like people brought in by the networks (even if we all know that they really work for WWE), and I'm not sure that they are the best choices, but the people I would use for these roles would be J.J. Dillon and Jim Smallman. I wouldn't put them on TV all of the time or even most of the time. It would be a job they could do from home via social media fifteen weeks out of sixteen. But I do think that in order to create the feel that it's the networks making the decisions rather than the shadowy WWE cabal feel that WWE has had for the majority of the past two years, which has totally destroyed the current brand extension, we need new figureheads who feel like someone a network would bring in to be in charge of their show due to some form of past success (with Smallman you can do some video packages to tell his story).
I kinda figured that Steph was just the master of ceremonies type of role, so i wasn't bothered. I would love to see people analyzing and conspiring on each side, but they don't have GMs anymore. Thus my first idea that came up as soon as you started shooting names was, why not just make a committee between the World Champion/Women's Champion, and Tag Champions? You'd avoid the problem of switching brand specific titles, the champions would be untouchable, you avoid making one title seem less for not being first pick, and it's a HUGE tool to build up a couple of stories if you have say Rolling say "I want the Fiend, I'm not done with him", or The Revival say "Fuck no, no more New Day!", or Lesnar being outvoted and sorry dude, we're getting Roman Reigns.

Two more notes.

Why are the cruisergeeks here if the title is not even in the main roster anymore? What the fuck are they gonna fight for?

Fiend, why is the Fiend, the big supernatural being that can't be controlled, being considered in a sports-like draft? Motherfucker can probably teleport from city to city anyway, because I HIGHLY doubt he's riding in the roster bus.
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Re: WWE reveals draft rules, list of celebrities set to appear, Preliminary draft pools announced

Post by Bob-O » Oct 12th, '19, 06:51

In case anyone missed it, it's been pointed out that WWE drafted in the exact order of this list.

Things are looking pretty good for Titus on Monday!
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Re: WWE reveals draft rules, list of celebrities set to appear, Preliminary draft pools announced

Post by Big Red Machine » Oct 12th, '19, 17:24

cero2k wrote: Oct 11th, '19, 09:41
Big Red Machine wrote: Oct 10th, '19, 18:56

4. Steph's role does not fit at all. That sort of role makes sense when you've got a league of thirty teams picking rosters that will be in direct competition with each other. This is a draft between two factions that will be in indirect competition with each other. Having one person announce all of the picks makes it feel WAY too same-y and loses the distinction between the sides

Look... I don't want to see the brands feuding and bickering and I think the Fox vs. USA portrayal is the best way to portray this, but I do think we need different personalities to make the shows feel different. The way to do this isn't Steph announcing picks and droves of celebrities offering their scripted comments on it. The way to do this is to take two people with some TV presence and who feel like they are someone who has a vision for their show due to some sort of similar management experience. Someone who comes across like a sports team's general manager or the station manager at a TV station whose job it is to put together a lineup of programs that will draw the maximum possible viewers every week. And then put each of them in a war room with a team of people who feel like wrestling experts, especially playing on people's general knowledge without actually speaking the details that would break kayfabe. People like Road Dogg and Adam Pearce, Fit Finley, Michael Hayes, Albert, Sara Del Rey, and Eric Bischoff) mixed in with people who have a kayfabe sense of that (Teddy Long) and even throw in some random respected veterans who haven't actually felt like part of the establishment either on or off screen (Mark Henry, Beth Phoenix), and even throw in some Easter Eggs for those in the know (Ryan Ward, Gabe Sapolsky).

In fairness to WWE, it took me a LONG time to come up with some figureheads who could feel like people brought in by the networks (even if we all know that they really work for WWE), and I'm not sure that they are the best choices, but the people I would use for these roles would be J.J. Dillon and Jim Smallman. I wouldn't put them on TV all of the time or even most of the time. It would be a job they could do from home via social media fifteen weeks out of sixteen. But I do think that in order to create the feel that it's the networks making the decisions rather than the shadowy WWE cabal feel that WWE has had for the majority of the past two years, which has totally destroyed the current brand extension, we need new figureheads who feel like someone a network would bring in to be in charge of their show due to some form of past success (with Smallman you can do some video packages to tell his story).
I kinda figured that Steph was just the master of ceremonies type of role, so i wasn't bothered. I would love to see people analyzing and conspiring on each side, but they don't have GMs anymore. Thus my first idea that came up as soon as you started shooting names was, why not just make a committee between the World Champion/Women's Champion, and Tag Champions? You'd avoid the problem of switching brand specific titles, the champions would be untouchable, you avoid making one title seem less for not being first pick, and it's a HUGE tool to build up a couple of stories if you have say Rolling say "I want the Fiend, I'm not done with him", or The Revival say "Fuck no, no more New Day!", or Lesnar being outvoted and sorry dude, we're getting Roman Reigns.
My objection to Steph's role is an artistic one, not a logical one.
From a kayfabe POV, your idea with the champions doesn't work because SD has more heel champs and they would act in a self-interested manner. Also, do you really want two whole shows of Roode and Ziggler bickering with Seth and Becky?
It also then leaves open the question of who do the free agents talk to about trying to sign contracts? The champions? That seems odd.

More importantly, though, having these wrestlers making the decisions would make it feel like the agency is not with the networks, which is the feel WWE wants.

What would work, though, is what they did in the original draft (especially with Vince and Kurt) where Kurt appointed himself Vince's advisor and convinced Vince to draft certain people. You could accomplish the same types of things, but while still keeping the ultimate decision-making power where it's supposed to be. For example, Rollins walking into the Raw war room and demanding that The Fiend be drafted to Raw, or The Revival trying to convince the SD team not to draft New Day.

Two more notes.

Why are the cruisergeeks here if the title is not even in the main roster anymore? What the fuck are they gonna fight for?
They're probably doing away with the division as a main-roster concept.


Fiend, why is the Fiend, the big supernatural being that can't be controlled, being considered in a sports-like draft? Motherfucker can probably teleport from city to city anyway, because I HIGHLY doubt he's riding in the roster bus.
So what? They can draft him to wherever they want to draft him to. Whether he obeys their rules or just shows up when and where he wants to is a whole different question, andthat is the important one as far as The Fiend's aura is concerned.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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