7 Worst WWE Drafts In History
1. 2019 WWE Draft AND 2019 Superstar Shakeup
Before addressing the elephants in the room, we must first rewind to April 2019.
Still unfortunately known as the Superstar Shake-up, it actually saw a lot of interesting moves and a good mix of incoming talent from NXT as well. Remarkably the draft picks were pretty damn good from top to bottom, with some big surprise like Roman Reigns switching sides. And it was also spread out, extending the excitement around the event to beyond one or two nights. So why is this worth mentioning in a "worst of" list?
Well it occurred between 15 April and 8 May 2019. The Wildcard Rule was introduced on 6 May 2019. This effectively killed the brand split BEFORE IT EVEN FINISHED.
This would've been enough to make the number one spot all by itself, but then we got to October.
Starting with 11 October's SmackDown, we got Stephanie McMahon dryly reading picks at a podium after one match (another marriage of The Fiend and DQ finishes) decided the draft order. As aforementioned, of the 50 total coming picks only about 20 or so of those actually changed anything.
Instead it just reinforced the brand split that was killed by the Wildcard Rule. Adding insult to injury, the list WWE released of the "draft pool" for Raw (another confusing and bad idea) was the actual order for most of the picks conducted. So all surprise was thrown out the window.
Add in the thrown together segments with Fox's other talents, awful "post-draft trade" (pulling another 2011 John Cena), and the 25% drop in viewership and it is safe to say this failed miserably.
Expect another draft by December to redo this redraft. It is the only way WWE knows.