Rebooking The 2002 WWE Brand Extension Draft
Taking another look at the original brand extension.
This week, WWE announced that starting in July, Raw and Smackdown will each have their own unique rosters, in addition to Smackdown going live each Tuesday.
This will mark the first time since 2011 that the rosters will be separate. When the rosters will separate this July, there may possibly (almost certainly) be a superstar draft and, with this in mind, let's take a look at the initial brand extension in 2002. The draft left a lot to be desired, it must be said.
Many of the big WWE stars weren't eligible to be drafted because they were either free agents (Steve Austin), wrestling in the main event for the championship (Chris Jericho & Triple H), or yet to return to WWE (Eddie Guerrero & Shawn Michaels). Instead, we had people like Kane, Big Show, Booker T, The Dudleys, Rikishi, and Lita of all people as part of the draft.
It was actually pretty terrible.
With the wonderful gift of hindsight, let's take another look at the initial brand extension draft, re-booking how the draft should have went.
The first thing to do is to get rid of most of the ridiculous rules that wouldn't allow big stars to get drafted. The only rule that we will keep in place is that the WWE Champion (Triple H) and the Women's Champion (Jazz) are immune from drafting. Otherwise, all superstars that were on the WWE roster by King of the Ring 2002 are eligible.
Let's get into it!
20. Smackdown Pick 1: Kurt Angle
Actual Pick: The Rock
With the first pick, Vince McMahon selects Kurt Angle to represent Smackdown.
McMahon would probably have inside info that The Rock was going to take an extended leave of absence to film The Rundown, and would want to make sure he had a blue chipper that you could build a brand around with the first pick. So Vince would bypass The Rock and select Kurt Angle, a former two-time WWF Champion and the greatest technical wrestler on the roster.
The pickup of Angle will immediately pay dividends, as he would win two more WWF Championships, one more World Championship, and main event WrestleMania three out of the next four years as a member of the Smackdown roster, stealing the show with Shawn Michaels the other year.
Just because it's the obvious choice doesn't mean it's the wrong one.