WWE Draft: 3 Things We Can Learn from the 2002 Selection Show

There are a lot of questions about the upcoming WWE Draft, but the 2002 draft may be able to provide some answers.

As soon as the return of the brand split was announced, the draft speculation started running wild. People wanted to know which superstars were going to which brand, how the championships were going to work, who would be the GM of each show, and so much more. The fact is we probably won’t know the answers to these questions for a few more weeks as SmackDown isn’t set to go live until July 19th. However, if WWE decides to do things similar to how they did them in 2002, we may have more answers than we think.

Admittedly I did not watch the 2002 WWE Draft when it first happened; I was just 5 years old after all. But after going back and watching it on the WWE Network, I noticed a lot of potential answers to the questions that so many of us have. So let’s talk about a few things we can learn about the 2016 Draft based on the 2002 Draft.

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1. The Number of Televised Picks

With such a large roster, it’s fair to wonder exactly how many picks are going to be made on TV. Obviously not every one of the 100+ superstars between WWE and NXT will be selected on-air for a couple reasons. First, it would take far too long, and second, people don’t care enough about where the Shining Stars or Darren Young are going to be drafted to televise it. So how many picks can we expect to be made on TV? According to the 2002 draft, probably 20 or 30.

2. How Tag Teams and Stables Will Be Drafted

Another big question is one that the New Day actually brought up on Raw recently, that being if tag teams will be selected together or separately. Unsurprisingly, Stephanie and Shane McMahon dodged the question and if 2002 is any indication, there was a reason for it. What I mean by that is there was no concrete rule regarding tag teams being selected together.

Screenshot from WWE Network, Bubba Ray and D-Von Dudley react to being drafted to opposite brands.

The 2002 draft featured Vince McMahon selecting Billy and Chuck together and Ric Flair selecting the NWO together. But later in the night, Ric selected Bubba Ray Dudley and Vince took D-Von, effectively separating the Dudley Boyz. Why didn’t Ric just take both of them? No one knows. So in 2016 we could see something similar where if WWE wants to break up a tag team, they could use the draft to do so. Hopefully, they don’t make the same mistake they did with the Dudleyz since their separation was deemed a unanimous failure.

3. How Championships Will Work

This one is tricky because each championship was handled differently in 2002, but we can still get some answers. We’ll start with the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. After the first draft, the champion would appear on both shows for a few months, but in September, the Undisputed title reverted back to the WWE title and was assigned to SmackDown while the Heavyweight title went to Raw. As for the upcoming draft, this tells us WWE could either have the champion appear on both shows or they could create a new title, so things are a bit murky for now.

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Similar to the WWE champion, the Women’s champion would also appear on both shows until, confusingly enough, it was eventually assigned exclusively to Raw. Now that we’ve had the Women’s revolution, we can assume this won’t happen again since leaving half the women on the roster without a title to fight for would be absurd. It seems likely that whoever the Women’s champion is will just appear on both Raw and SmackDown.

As for the secondary titles, the European and Intercontinental champions were both drafted by Raw and the titles became exclusive to the brand. This was strange as SmackDown was left with only the Hardcore and Cruiserweight titles as secondary championships. I think we can safely assume this problem will be avoided by the Intercontinental and United States titles going to opposite brands.

And finally for the Tag Team titles, the champions Billy and Chuck were drafted to Raw where they appeared exclusively. 7 months after the draft, SmackDown was given their own tag titles. That’s a long time for the tag teams on SmackDown to not have anything to fight for, so this issue will likely be avoided this year. Either the tag champs will appear on both shows, or another set of tag titles will be introduced shortly after the draft rather than 7 months later.

Nothing is set in stone, but the 2002 draft definitely gives us something to go off of. Things definitely seemed a bit disorganized and poorly planned during the first draft, so hopefully, issues like tag teams being drafted together or separately and titles being exclusive to one show will be ironed out now that they’ve had 14 years to think about things.

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