With WCW and ECW out of the picture, The WWF had way too many wrestlers under contract. It was a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless. To solve this dilemma, the company split the roster in two. Half of the wrestlers stayed on Raw, and half would go to SmackDown. They were meant to be exclusive to each brand, and wouldn't cross over, except for future dream matches. It seemed like a great idea. The night after the Invasion angle ended, a storyline kicked off where Stephanie McMahon and Shane McMahon sold their ownership of the company to Ric Flair. He now owned half of the WWF and Vince McMahon owned half. But they just couldn't get along. Linda McMahon jumped in to settle things. She declared that there would be a draft where each man would take turns choosing a wrestler from the roster for their respective show. It was an interesting concept, and a fascinating episode of raw. Fans had no idea where their favorites would end up. On the big night, McMahon went first and drafted The Rock to SmackDown. Flair had the second pick and chose The Undertaker. Throughout the night, the two took turns drafting wrestlers one-by-one. We saw unexpected events like The Dudley Boyz breaking up, The Intercontinental Title become an exclusive Raw title and Rikishi getting drafted before Brock Lesnar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-xZmOqef4g The wrestling portion of the show wasn't amazing, but had a fun Hulk Hogan and The Rock vs. Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and X-Pac match, and the main event had Triple H defeating Chris Jericho and Stephanie McMahon in a handicap match. With Steph losing, she had to leave the company (which obviously didn't last too long). Okay, so the draft wasn't without a bit of ridiculousness. First off, Triple H and Steve Austin weren't involved. It would have been even more interesting to see what order those two were drafted. Triple got out of it because he had a match that night...which made no sense since others with matches were still eligible, and Austin supposedly had it in his contract that he couldn't be drafted. Somehow he put that in his contract years ahead of time. That's odd. Subsequent years of the draft were also exciting events, but none of them lived up to the spectacle and intrigue of the first one.
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
