3 days Ago By Chris Roling
WWE's Raw moving to Netflix opens some really interesting doors for the company in many ways. There's an amazing, under-the-radar idea that could prosper, too—the WWE Draft. Almost without exception, past efforts at a WWE draft that led to brand splits have been colossal flops.
On paper, it's an amazing idea to take perhaps the most-hyped sporting event in the United States in the NFL's draft and blur the lines while doing it in the pro wrestling space. But the execution has just never been right. Raw on Netflix might be that thing that let's them color in and animate the on-paper idea in a way that really brings it to life.
Moving to a streaming platform at all feels akin to wrestling leaving the stone ages of cable television and the silly online bickering over weekly ratings. It brings it into something more modern, which could mean a modern draft that actually makes sense. Part of the problem is past WWE drafts never felt organic .
Onlookers knew they were predetermined results, and little backstage segments where wrestlers reacted to draft results were sort of just silly. Even worse was that one year WWE would cut to over-the-top reactions of folks in suits screaming and high-fiving because they had just drafted..
.Natalya . But WWE under Triple H has been anything but inorganic.
There has been a strong emphasis on long-form storytelling and character development. Sweeping broadcast presentation changes have led to modern-feeling entrances where cameras follow Superstars out of the tunnel into arenas and critical story developments that have happened without the presence of an official WWE camera, like a recent Kevin Owens betrayal . So why not modernize the draft next? Why not lean into that sort of partnership WWE has with UFC under the TKO umbrella now and hold a "draft" the same weekend as a UFC event? Maybe place it in the "offseason" lull on the WWE schedule before the road to WrestleMania really starts.
WWE runs fewer PLEs than ever these days, so a gap in the schedule might present the perfect yearly opportunity to make that happen. And at that "draft," why not let fans attend and get involved? Fans actually voting to decide where Superstars go probably wouldn't make any sense, of course, because they would then have some semblance of control over actually booking of weekly shows by way of formulating rosters. But announcing draft picks? That could be something fans could do at these drafts.
Heck, they could vote on mobile devices about where Superstars might end up on a pick-by-pick basis. Heck , WWE could integrate another powerhouse factor—mock drafts. Were WWE to craft a mock draft machine on its own website and offer WrestleMania tickets to the fans with the most accurate mock drafts.
..that would be one way to generate some interest.
It might be the sort of fake-real thing that even non-wrestling fans would compete in each year. Either way, a modern sports-based "draft" on an annual basis would keep rosters fresh. Not only that, it might make sense with fewer PLEs on the schedule to have more of a "sports" event on the calendar.
A wrestling show without wrestling sounds strange, but it really could bridge the gap between the fake factor of wrestling and the realness of sports in an interesting way. A draft idea is a goldmine that has largely felt out of place in past eras of WWE. But this time feels different, and the shift to Netflix feels like the right time to go back to the drawing board on this idea and innovation—much like WWE has done with everything else recently.
Honestly, even looping this year's (or early 2025) draft into something involving The Rock, the blurred-line story that he's now an executive, and how he could use it to mess with Roman Reigns to build a 'Mania match could be really smart. Granted, just because this would be a once-a-year event doesn't mean the work stops there. Actually adhering to a brand split (making the rare instances of rule-breaking all the more special) is a tough ask.
But it's a doable one and this era of WWE creative has earned the trust to give something like that another go. If nothing else, it's worth a shot at least once. If done right, something like the WWE draft could enter the mindshare of even casual or lapsed fans while bringing in new ones.
The idea has always been sound, but this feels like the perfect opportunity to do it right for the first time..
