10 WWE 2020 Draft Picks That Made No Sense

WWE’s main roster is divided into two shows, Raw and SmackDown, each with its own set of wrestlers who are exclusive to the program. To spice things up, WWE staged a full-on Draft, where every star will be up for grabs, with a representative for each show standing behind a podium and announcing who on the overall roster they’re choosing -- just like real sports.

But because wrestling is a storytelling medium based on using sports performance to convey a narrative, fans look at what works and what makes logical sense. As a result, there are a lot of things in the 2020 WWE Draft that has jammed in fans’ craws, so let’s take a look at them.

10 Moving Seth Rollins & Mysterio Family To SmackDown

The storyline between Seth Rollins and Rey Mysterio Jr.’s family has gone from pro wrestling feud to full-on saga, with extreme eyeball violence, intra-cult drama, and Rey’s son Dominik stepping up to hit people with kendo sticks. It’s gone on so long -- the two groups have wrestled matches against one another nearly every week on Raw since it began in May of 2020 -- that it feels like maybe the story’s been spread a little thin. The 2020 draft could have separated the two groups, but instead, all it did was move the feud over to SmackDown.

9 Moving Dolph Ziggler & Robert Roode back To SmackDown

In June of 2020, Raw and SmackDown did a quick trade that resulted in Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode being moved over to Raw in exchange for AJ Styles.

Fans saw a lot of Ziggler and very little of Roode, as he was stuck in Canada due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Roode finally returned to the show in September, for a pretty decent match against WWE Champion Drew McIntyre. It felt like they just arrived on Raw, so moving them back to SmackDown felt like it was a little too soon.

8 Drafting The Fiend

When it comes to “supernatural” or “unrealistic” characters, it feels like you have to walk a fine line. While it’s obviously silly that characters like Bray Wyatt and The Undertaker want to win championship belts, there’s a level of suspension of disbelief as far as that goes. Once you start incorporating roster draft picks in the mix, the situation gets a little tenuous. Why, for example, would the (kayfabe) people in charge of Raw want a supernatural villain on their combat sports program?

It is, however, hilarious that a demonic children’s television host who can teleport wrestlers to a Black Lodge hell dimension is participating in a sports draft.

7 Drafting Aleister Black & Kevin Owens To SmackDown

WWE Superstar Kevin Owens Performing A Clothesline On Aliester Black

When it comes to the Draft, maybe they should have just made it a rule that they were going to trade storylines and dispense with pretending otherwise. One of the stranger choices of the Draft was the decision to move both Aleister Black and Kevin Owens to SmackDown, as they had been feuding on Raw in the wake of Black’s heel turn. While both wrestlers are great, it didn’t necessarily feel like a thing that needed to continue. The only promising thing about this is that it now reunites Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, who tend to create magic together.

6 Splitting-Up Heavy Machinery

Image Featuring WWE Tag Team Heavy Machinery

Tucker and Otis, known together as Heavy Machinery, were the perfect WWE midcard tag team -- a duo full of personality who were capable in the ring. For some reason Vince McMahon got really obsessed with Otis, and Tucker fell by the wayside except for being Otis’ wingman during the whole Mandy Rose romance. In the 2020 Draft, Tucker ended up getting moved to Raw, splitting the team and certainly spelling doom for Tucker. Thankfully, this is one where WWE seemed to come to their senses, as Tucker was moved back to SmackDown in the wake of his betrayal of Otis at Hell in a Cell.

5 Moving The Whole AJ Styles Division

For the past few months, SmackDown’s singles midcarders concerned with the Intercontinental Championship were primarily AJ Styles, Matt Riddle, and Jeff Hardy, with Baron Corbin hanging around, too. With the draft, the former three (sans Corbin) were all drafted to Raw, and it appears that they may just continue wrestling one another on that show, too. Raw devotees can at least rejoice that they had the good sense not to bring Baron Corbin back to the show he ruined.

4 Drafting Any Of The Raw Underground Dudes

While it certainly had its critics, the gritty, shoot-style Raw Underground segments at least felt like something new to liven up a three-hour pro wrestling show. But alas, WWE sadly put Shane McMahon’s backroom fight club to bed, setting its handful of exclusive talents like Dabba-Kato adrift.

In the Draft, each show is able to choose whoever they want from a pool of talent. So, to hear that Raw used opportunities to pick guys like Riddick Moss and Arturo Ruas, it’s difficult not to look at those as wasted choices.

3 Drafting Bray Wyatt & Alexa Bliss Separately

On SmackDown, the big Bray Wyatt storyline has involved him bringing Alexa Bliss to his side, much to the chagrin of Alexa’s former buddy, Braun Strowman. Both Wyatt and Bliss ended up moving to Raw, but the show curiously chose to draft them separately. One of the rules of the Draft is that a show can pick tag teams and stables, so it stands to reason that these two associated performers could have been drafted together.

2 The New Day Situation

Most of the Draft seemed to be about trading storylines between shows, with the only real surprise being the splitting of The New Day. Moving Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston to Raw while keeping Big E on SmackDown was definitely a surprise and a potential bummer, if the idea is to phase out the New Day gimmick. The Draft’s own rules -- you can pick an entire stable if you want -- made this split baffling to begin with, but the fact that Woods and Kingston just won the SmackDown Tag Titles made it needlessly confusing. The solution, of course, was that New Day would trade their belts with Street Profits’ Raw Tag Titles, which makes the titles feel like props even more than usual.

1 Drafting Retribution

For about a month or two in the late summer, Raw and SmackDown were setting up Retribution as this rebellious invading force taking WWE by storm, an effort that seemed to die on the vine once they finally debuted. Stupid costumes aside, they were -- in kayfabe -- signed to official WWE contracts and started losing matches. Further undercutting the appeal of this group was that Raw officially selected them during the draft. Even more so than The Fiend, wouldn’t both shows be reluctant to choose Retribution, leaving them as free agents so they could just invade whichever show they wanted to, anyway?

NEXT: Retribution: 5 Ways WWE Set Them Up To Fail (& 5 Why They Set Them To Succeed)