10 Most Impactful WWE Draft Picks

4. Daniel Bryan To SmackDown (2011)

Daniel_Bryan Mitb
WWE.com

After returning to action after being fired for choking out Justin Roberts with a tie, Daniel Bryan wasn’t doing much of note on Raw. But three months after jumping over to SmackDown, he won the Money in the Bank ladder match, and his career started to slowly take off. It took a little while, as despite having the briefcase, he was relegated to battling Heath Slater and JTG in pay-per-view pre-show matches.

At Survivor Series, he cashed in on the Big Show, becoming world champion and began scraping his way up the card. The company was far from going all in on him (they never quite did), but that title run lead to the infamous WrestleMania 28 match with Sheamus where he lost in 18 seconds. This led to some really upset fans, who began to passionately back the underdog like never before.

Two years down the road Bryan was main-eventing WrestleMania 30. Without that initial jump to SmackDown, you’d have to wonder if he would have ever received an opportunity to hold a world title. It will be interesting to see if the upcoming draft will have any large butterfly effects like the 2011 one version did.

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As Rust Cohle from True Detective said "Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you're good at." Sadly, I can't solve a murder like Rust...or change a tire, or even tie a tie. But I do know all the lyrics to Hulk Hogan's "Real American" theme song and can easily name every Natural Born Thriller from the dying days of WCW. I was once ranked 21st in the United States in Tetris...on the Playstation 3 version...for about a week. Follow along @AndrewSoucek and check out my podcast at wrestlingwithfriends.com