News

News: What Caused Mistakes During WWE Draft on Friday, Possibility of Trades

TJR Wrestling

The WWE Draft got underway last Friday on Smackdown, but there was a mistake that led to fans knowing what the picks were going to before they were announced. That’s because WWE posted a list on their website that featured superstars eligible to be drafted on Friday and then others that would be drafted on Raw. You can check out the list that we posted here, which was from the original WWE.com article.

As the WWE Draft was taking place during Smackdown, what generated more commentary on Twitter than the actual show was that they were going in the exact order that was on WWE’s website. The first ten picks went in the same order.

Round One: Becky Lynch – Raw
Roman Reigns – Smackdown
The O.C. (United States Champion AJ Styles, Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson) – Raw
“The Fiend” Bray Wyatt – Smackdown
Drew McIntyre – Raw
Round Two: Randy Orton – Raw
Sasha Banks – Smackdown
Ricochet – Raw
Braun Strowman – Smackdown
Bobby Lashley – Raw

They also picked Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross as separate picks instead of drafting them as a team even though teams could be drafting together. The team doesn’t have a name, though, so maybe that’s the reason why? I don’t know.

By the third round, WWE figured it out and they changed up the order a bit. I’m not going to go over everything again, but there were names mentioned that were not in the exact order. So what happened?

According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer on Observer Radio, Meltzer explained it like this: “The person who gave the website the lists … the website people were told to put these names up in alphabetical order. That’s what they were told. Somehow, alphabetical order got forgotten and they put the list up as they were and that’s why it ended up the way it did.”

If you go to WWE.com now, you can see that it’s in alphabetical order and it was changed to that last Friday when WWE realized it after Smackdown.

Moving on, it was noted by @Wrestlevotes on Twitter that there may be some trades related to the WWE Draft. It’s a Twitter account that has gotten many stories correct in the past, so they likely tweeted this because they were told that trades were a possibility.

We will find out tonight on Raw if there are trades involving the draft picks.

TJR Thoughts: I think it’s pretty bad that WWE messed up the alphabetical order list of the wrestler names. Whoever gave the list (from the creative team to WWE.com team) should have made it perfectly clear that the order needed to be in alphabetical order and not the list of who is drafted. This is a multi-billion dollar company. They shouldn’t be making mistakes like that. Trades are fine with me too.