WWE Backstage is currently airing on FS1 with a ‘preview’ of sorts, a shorter version of what they’ll be doing later on I suppose. The decently hyped WWE studio show kicked off with a panel consisting of Renee Young, Booker T, Christian and Paige. They later introduced Triple H so that he could announce the previously indicated ‘blockbuster trade’ between Raw and SmackDown.
Triple H then confirmed that Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross are being traded to SmackDown. These two were, confoundingly, initially drafted to Raw separately using two picks. This is despite the fact that tandems could be drafted with a single pick, and the two were paired together in WWE’s own preliminary draft pools beforehand. Funnily they’ve ended up drafted together to SmackDown anyway.
The term ‘trade’ is curious here as it doesn’t seem they’ve officially announced Raw getting anything out of this. They’ve only vaguely claimed that this is in exchange for future draft pick considerations. To me this reads like an NFL team trading a player for picks in the next year’s draft rather than a specific equivalent.
If the idea here is that this will pay off in future iterations of the WWE Draft, I don’t think anyone could possibly believe that they’ll remember this the next time a draft comes, if we even come to have another at all.
SmackDown was in desperate need of more female competitors.
With Ember Moon on the shelf, Charlotte, Becky officially on Raw, and Naomi still on leave, champion Bayley was left with very little in the way of contenders. Alexa and Nikki are two babyfaces (for now, as alignments for women can shift at any moment) that can theoretically enter into that spot whenever they’re needed.
This seems to simply imply that they shortly realized after the draft the situation with SmackDown’s women’s division. Plans for the finalized rosters may well have also changed between Part 1 and 2 of the draft, that’d be fairly easy to believe.
Funnily, Triple H framed this as the first move of new Executive Director of SmackDown Bruce Prichard. Prichard replaced Eric Bischoff, who was named to the position – seemingly in-name-only – during the summer. They acknowledged the move on the program without making any mention of the man Prichard replaced.
For Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross, this is probably a good move. The Kabuki Warriors will probably be holding onto the Women’s Tag Titles for a while, for whatever that’s worth. And becoming singles champion on a brand with both Charlotte and Becky on it, not to mention Lacey Evans waiting in the wings, someone who’s still clearly being groomed for stardom for better or worse. On SmackDown, the next top babyface of the women’s division would be Carmella.
Suffice to say, that’s going to be a much easier scene to break through. Alexa Bliss is already a multi-time singles champion and Nikki has the potential to do the same for certain. So probably a sound move, if not a particularly major headline.
