10 Reasons The WWE Draft Concept Failed

8. SmackDown Was Clearly The B-Show

Was there every any doubt that Raw was the A-show during the Brand Split? From a quality standpoint, SmackDown was surpassing Raw almost every single week in 2002 with Paul Heyman at the helm of Creative. The blue brand continued to rule for years to come, but it didn't make a difference when the WWE Draft came around. When the selection for Superstars started, it was apparent everyone wanted to be where they could make the biggest impact, and that was Monday Night Raw. This became more of a problem as years passed. The distribution of star power was relatively even earlier on, but by 2009, Raw scored all the major names in the WWE Draft. The year of 2008 was the only exception as WWE wanted to make SmackDown a top priority with it moving to MyNetwork TV, but once the top talent failed to draw ratings, they were moved back to Monday nights. It got to such a point where being drafted to SmackDown was almost seen as a demotion. The blue brand received the likes of Christian and Kofi Kingston in the 2010 WWE Draft, but they were wiped of all their notable names including Edge, Chris Jericho and Batista. Their biggest star was Big Show: figuratively, literally and unfortunately. If no one cared about SmackDown, fans would therefore not care when anyone left Raw for Friday nights, either.