The WWE Draft has been taking place over SmackDown and Raw and now a new report has shed some light on some plans for the draft that were shelved by the company.
The 2021 WWE Draft kicked off on Friday 1st of October on SmackDown with the blue brand naming WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns as the overall first pick. This marked the 3rd draft in a row where The Tribal Chief has been SmackDown’s number one pick. Raw followed up with their first choice being WWE Champion Big E.
However, a new report from Mike Johnson of PWInsider has suggested that Big E wasn’t always the automatic first pick for the red brand despite being WWE Champion. The report states that Bobby Lashley was instead set to be Raw’s first pick with Big E’s final destination being left to find out on Monday Night Raw itself. This also would have played into the fact that the rest of The New Day were drafted to SmackDown once again splitting up the trio. The report adds that the idea was dropped at some point on Friday although Lashley was still drafted to Raw with the rest of The Hurt Business.
Another plan that was seemingly in the works for the draft was the splitting of former SmackDown Tag Team Champions, The Street Profits. Johnson’s report says that the original idea would see Montez Ford move to Raw where his wife Bianca Belair was also drafted while Angelo Dawkins would stay put on Friday Night SmackDown. That didn’t end up happening with both members of The Street Profits being drafted to Monday nights as the red brand’s seventh pick on night two of the WWE Draft. The former RETRIBUTION team of T-BAR and Mace have found themselves split up with Mace going to SmackDown and the former Dominik Dijakovic staying on Raw.