The Most Important WWE Draft Selections In History
The 2024 WWE Draft kicks off Friday night on "SmackDown," and while nobody is quite sure who will end up where, there's an lingering question hanging over the WWE fandom: How will the draft change the landscape of the company as it exists today? What long-term impacts will be felt in the future? What will happen that is —in a word — important?
It's a question no one can answer as of this writing, and probably for a while afterward. What we can do, however, is examine times in the past when a draft pick has altered the course of the WWE timeline. These are rare occurrences — there have been 18 WWE Drafts before this one, and many of them were ignored by WWE's creative team immediately afterward, meaning they didn't change much. Some, however, had far-reaching consequences, both for individual careers and the company's trajectory as a whole. With that in mind, and after having done what can accurately be called pain-staking research, Wrestling Inc. is pleased to present the most important WWE Draft selections in history.
2002: Billy and Chuck to SmackDown
A couple years after the end of the New Age Outlaws and a couple decades before teaming up with The Acclaimed, Billy Gunn was part of another, somewhat less celebrated tag team. But while their gimmick got them reprimanded by GLAAD and their manager was a hair stylist named Rico, in 2002, Gunn and Chuck Palumbo — collectively known as Billy and Chuck — were the WWF Tag Team Champions, having just come off a WrestleMania X8 victory over the Hardy Boyz, the Dudley Boyz, and the APA. Shortly afterward, they were drafted as a unit with the ninth overall pick in the first-ever WWE Draft, the fifth selection of "SmackDown" owner Vince McMahon.
Why was this draft pick so monumental? Well, while the WWE Women's Championship and what was then known as the WWE Undisputed Championship were ineligible to be drafted and would float between brands, there was no such provision for the tag titles. And while it didn't happen until months after Billy and Chuck had lost the belts — and after the belts themselves had been transferred to "Raw" — the act of one show drafting the tag team champions inevitably led to the creation of a second set of tag titles for the other show: the World Tag Team Championship.
WWE unified their two sets of tag titles in 2009, but when they re-initiated the brand split in 2016, the World Tag Team Championship returned in the form of the "Raw" Tag Team Championship, the titles currently held by R-Truth and The Miz and which have now been rechristened as the World Tag Team Championship once more. Aside from the WWE title, the Intercontinental title, and the United States title, they are the oldest active championships in the company, somehow still around despite nearly every other WWE belt getting a total reboot. And all because "SmackDown" drafted Billy and Chuck.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
2004: Paul Heyman to Raw
The original 2002 draft was essentially a storytelling vehicle for the ongoing managerial feud between Vince McMahon and Ric Flair, and its follow-up in 2004 basically tried the same thing, only this time between "Raw" and "SmackDown" General Managers Eric Bischoff and Paul Heyman. This version was less of an actual draft and something more akin to the Superstar Shake-Up years later, with Bischoff and Heyman taking turns drawing random names from the other GM's roster. It was far from memorable due to the lack of big names involved (and the biggest name involved, Triple H, ended up getting traded back to his previous brand before the draft was even finalized) but the very last pick has some serious symbolic resonance, as Eric Bischoff put his hand in the tumbler and pulled out the name of Paul Heyman himself.
While the tumultuous relationship between Bischoff and Heyman was played for wacky hijinks throughout the episode, there were very real forces behind the scenes moving Bischoff to choose that particular name. In 2002, Heyman was named lead writer of "WWE SmackDown." For the most part he excelled in the role, driving "SmackDown" to higher and higher creative and financial peaks, but by his own admission, he didn't exactly behave like an adult backstage and was constantly getting into arguments with Vince McMahon. He was removed from the job in 2003 and given an on-screen role as "SmackDown" GM, but the 2004 draft was actually his official send-off from that role, as he declared he would never work for real-life arch-rival Bischoff and quit the job. In actuality, Heyman was send to WWE's developmental territory, Ohio Valley Wrestling, where he would meet and befriend a 26-year-old prospect named CM Punk.
The rest, as they say, is history. Heyman would eventually leave WWE in truth after again clashing with McMahon over WWE's revival of Heyman's ECW promotion, but not before refusing to fire Punk in OVW despite being ordered to do so, fundamentally altering the course of wrestling history. When he returned in 2012, he would assume his now-familiar role as advocate, serving Punk, Brock Lesnar, and a small host of other WWE stars before finally settling on Roman Reigns. Heyman getting drafted by "Raw" in 2004 wasn't just a storyline — it represented a major flashpoint in the career of someone who is now officially and improbably, a WWE Hall of Famer, and among the company's most prominent and powerful figures.
Written by Miles Schneiderman
2005: John Cena to Raw
John Cena's 2005 move to "Raw" is the definition of historic. To this day, fans remember anxiously waiting for the first superstar of the WWE Draft Lottery to meet Chris Jericho in the ring, just to hear the familiar opening notes of Cena's iconic music. When Cena walked down the ramp with the WWE Championship in hand, he completely shattered the standards by which world championships were drafted, and made history as the first world champion to be drafted to another show.
Cena was white-hot in his popularity during this groundbreaking draft decision, but it wasn't just the "Doctor of Thuganomics"'s acclaim that distinguishes this draft pick as revolutionary. Prior to this, world champions were either immune to being drafted, or stayed on their original brand — such was the precedent in the original 2002 draft (back when a single world champion appeared on both shows) and the 2004 draft (which was completely random and simply saw neither world champion selected). Cena was the first instance of a world champion moving shows as a result of the draft, and instead of abdicating or trading his title, Cena continued to hold and defend the WWE Championship on "Raw," while World Heavyweight Champion Batista was himself drafted to "SmackDown." The WWE audience had officially been introduced to the concept of world champions taking their titles alongside them when drafted, setting a precedent for years to come and setting WWE down the path toward Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair awkwardly exchanging show-branded title belts in the ring.
Ever since that day in 2005, world champions have been eligible to draft — though the 2024 draft is set to end that particular streak, as the rules apparently stipulate that no champions at all can be drafted, aside from the women's tag champs. This, despite the fact that WWE recently replaced every show-branded title belt they had into more generic ones that could much more easily be swapped via the draft. Go figure.
Written by Angeline Phu
2016: Alexa Bliss to SmackDown
With tears in her eyes and her "NXT" family surrounding her, Alexa Bliss' career was officially launched with her move from "WWE NXT" to "WWE SmackDown." Why is that so important? Because there has never been, before or since, a more unlikely megastar drafted from "NXT" to the main roster.
Bliss was never the "it girl" of NXT. She started as the type of character her name would imply — a smiling, bedazzled cheerleader who was one of the furthest women in the world from winning the NXT Women's Championship (she only ever got two opportunities at the title, let alone a reign — before turning heel in 2015 and primarily serving as a manager for Buddy Murphy (now AEW's Buddy Matthews) and Wesley Blake (now Westin Blake). So when she was drafted to "SmackDown" in 2016 (as the 47th overall pick, not even close to making the draft's televised broadcast, but being relegated to the WWE Network) the WWE audience certainly did not expect much from her main roster run.
To the surprise of basically everyone, Bliss quickly reached goddess-tier status on the main roster. During her initial run on "SmackDown," Bliss became the first-ever two-time "SmackDown" Women's Champion and had a feud with industry icon Mickie James. When she eventually moved to Monday nights, Bliss became a three-time "Raw" Women's Champion (the first to ever win the women's title on both brands), became Miss Money in the Bank, and was victorious in the inaugural women's Elimination Chamber match. Bliss also boasts three WWE Women's Tag Team Championship reigns, making her the second-ever WWE women's Triple Crown Champion. Aside from Becky Lynch (who briefly went back to "NXT" to finally win the women's title in 2023) and Ronda Rousey (who never competed in "NXT") Bliss is the only women's Triple Crown Champion to earn that honor without having previously held the NXT Women's Championship. From loser-turned-manager to multi-time world champion — no other "NXT" draftee, regardless of gender, has ever seen their career skyrocket to that extent upon reaching the main roster.
Alexa Bliss occupies rarefied air in WWE history, helped re-write the story of American women's wrestling at a time when nobody wanted to give credit to anyone but the celebrated Four Horsewomen, and should inspire wrestlers for decades to come — and none of it would have been possible without the 2016 draft.
Written by Angeline Phu
2018: Drew McIntyre to Raw
If there's one person who's story of rebirth via draft pick rivals Alexa Bliss, it's the story of Drew McIntyre. These days, pretty much everyone who follows WWE knows the broad strokes — McIntyre came into the company as, quite literally, Vince McMahon's "Chosen One" and proceeded to endure a staggering fall from grace, eventually finding himself as part of comedy stable the Three Man Band before getting released in 2014. Some of the details of his triumphant return, however, are less known to those who weren't watching "WWE NXT" at the time, and crucially involved the 2018 draft.
McIntyre was gone for three years, and when he came back in 2017, it was as part of the "NXT" roster. It was clear from the start that McIntyre's stay on the Black & Gold brand wouldn't be for long — he won the NXT Championship four months after his debut — but his meteoric rise was temporarily derailed when he lost the title and suffered an injury in the months that followed. When he came back, it was as part of the "WWE Raw" roster, as he was the first "NXT" wrestler selected in the 2018 Superstar Shake-Up (a less structured version of the WWE Draft), appearing as back-up for Dolph Ziggler.
In the later years of McMahon's creative regime, very few male wrestlers who succeeded in "NXT" could also say they succeeded on the main roster. While McIntyre might have only had a cup of coffee in "NXT," he remains the major exception — one of only five wrestlers to follow up an NXT Championship reign with a world title reign on the main roster, and the only one since Seth Rollins to compete for a singles world championship, let alone win it, in the main event of WrestleMania. Unlike the vast majority of "NXT" alumni, McIntyre is a consistent main event player in the modern WWE to this day, something that never could have happened if he hadn't been chosen (for real this time) in the 2018 WWE Draft.
Written by Miles Schneiderman