With the latest WWE draft occurring this Monday, I have been retrospectively looking at each of the previous talent exchanges in order to look at the impact they have had on the talent involved.

As an aside, I should note that while there was not an official draft in 2006, Paul Heyman was allowed to choose two wrestlers from RAW or Smackdown to participate in the launch of the new ECW brand. These two picks were Rob Van Dam and Kurt Angle.

(i) Van Dam’s career mishaps have been documented in all of my previous columns. A serial draftee, this would be his last, as his move from RAW to the extreme brand was supposed to set him up as the figurehead of ECW.

This plan was derailed almost from the bat with RVD’s arrest for drugs offences and subsequent title losses and suspension. Van Dam would never receive the same level of backing from management, and while he remained the most popular part of ECW television, he never really rose above the midcard, and would voluntarily leave WWE within the year.

(ii) Kurt Angle had also been another 2005 draftee, and had certainly had a eventful (if short) run on RAW, before being moved back to Smackdown as placeholder Champion in January 2006.

Angle had kept up his streak of good work throughout 2006, bar the dud of a match at the Royal Rumble with Mark Henry (which he more than made up for at Judgment Day), and his match at No Way Out against Undertaker was voted Match of the Year by many.

Angle viewed his transfer to ECW as a demotion, and although he had a pair of decent matches against Randy Orton at One Night Stand and Vengeance, as well as a curiosity against Sabu, his apparent increased reliance on painkillers led to his departure from WWE in 2006’s biggest shock in August of that year.

Angle has since gone on to have an erratic run in TNA, in which he still been a standout player, if not operating at quite the same level of consistency of his 2002 peak.

Both of those who could be considered ‘official’ draftees in 2006 suffered a negative change in their careers. 2007’s draft went back to the original computer-based format, and hoped to make a similar impact to the 2004 and 2005 editions. It would also go to prove if being drafted to ECW would remain such a negative stigma. This column covers only the televised portion of the draft, as a supplementary edition was also held on WWE.com later in the week:

(i) Smackdown’s first draft pick was the truly Great Khali, who was just coming off his ‘greatest’ series of WWE matches (which admittedly isn’t saying much) with John Cena.

Many thought that Khali’s monster image had been irreparably damaged by his multiple losses by both pinfall and submission to Cena in a short space of time but that did not really prove to be an issue. In fact, in a bizarre seeming string of events, Khali would actually wind up as Smackdown Champion only a couple of months after his draft.

Blue brand Champ Edge, who himself had only won the belt due to injuries to previous main man Undertaker and preferred number one contender Mr. Kennedy, was himself struck down by an injury and forced to vacate the strap. Of HIS rivals, Kane was never supposed to be Champion, management did not want Batista to regain the title so soon after his previous run, so the monstrous Khali was given the nod almost by illogical default.

His winning the belt was particularly strange considering that by then WWE was embroiled in the post-Benoit steroid scandal; why would Vince want one of the main public faces of his company as a larger than life muscle bound freak (not unprecedented, see Luger, Lex, 1993). Anyway, Khali has done as well as can be expected during his latest run on Smackdown.

No one expected that much from him other than performing as a novelty act in the first place and since the title run, this has been Khali’s place on the roster.

On the other hand, Khali is incredibly popular in his native India, and his title victory must have done wonders for his status (and the corresponding WWE revenue growth in that market), so in that respect Khali’s present Smackdown run has been a success.

(ii) ECW’s first official 2007 pick was next. They got the Boogeyman, and that’s all I really need to say here. Seriously though, Boogeyman had always been a seriously limited novelty act, and the beginning of his ECW run marked the beginning of the end of his WWE career to date.

Boogeyman would firstly win a run of the mill squash match against virtual jobber Matt Striker, before being utterly annihilated by the debuting and retooled Big Daddy V for the next month or so. Never even a passable worker, Boogeyman has not been seen since this very one sided feud ended and his move certainly continued the trend of going to ECW being a very sign for a wrestler’s career.

(iii) The first draft pick for RAW was Booker T and Sharmell.

Utilising the ‘King’ gimmick, Booker T had enjoyed an effective career regeneration, going from being a midcard heel loosing to Boogeyman at Wrestlemania XXII, to beating Rey Mysterio at the Great American Bash 2006 and enjoying a lengthy by-WWE-standards run with the World Title.

However by 2007 the Royal gimmick had pretty much run its course and Booker badly needed a change of scenery and some fresh opponents. The move to RAW would certainly accomplish this, but probably not in the way WWE management foresaw it.

The laidback King and his wife were apprehensive about leaving the relatively relaxed Smackdown locker room and being put on the more politically charged RAW brand. Their suspicions were almost immediately confirmed when, after competing in the exciting Vengeance main event, Booker T was hammered in a completely one sided feud with HHH, and then suspended for a pot-related offence after the RAW following Summerslam.

This was too much for the veteran, and when combined with WWE passing on using his own territory as a developmental earlier in the year, made him leave the company by last September.

Following the end of his no-compete clause, Booker walked right into TNA, initially floundering somewhat as a babyface, but recently recapturing momentum as a heel. In this case a draft move has once again resulted in essentially the loss of a competent main event star to the WWE.

(iv) The concept of a move to ECW being a bad one for the wrestlers’ involved career’s was further strengthened in its next pick - Chris Benoit.

Benoit had been on a tear through the mid card for much of 2007, holding the United States Championship for much of the year, while continuously elevating protégé MVP until he was able to become a competent Champion himself. Benoit also significantly and noticeably upped his in-ring game in 2007, incorporating MMA style mat work to replace rest holds in order to keep in tune with contemporary trends.

Benoit’s last Smackdown match was a cracker against Edge, and he also had one of the best matches of Bobby Lashley’s career on the Draft RAW show. On his move to ECW, Benoit was to be used to further elevate younger talent while also being the Champion of the brand. However for the second time, WWE’s plans for the ECW Title went wrong, this time with tragic results.

Much has already been written about Chris Benoit’s final days (I’ve just finished, and would heartily recommend, the ‘Ring of Hell’ book), and it is debatable whether his move to ECW had any impact on the final decisions of what now seems a lengthy mental break down.

From a purely business stand point though, WWE again lost one of its most reliable stars following a draft to ECW, and therefore this move can be considered on just this level, an unmitigated failure.

(v) On slightly more irrelevant matters, Smackdown’s next pick was Torrie Wilson . Then WWE’s longest tenured female performer, Wilson was expected to move to Smackdown to carry on with her standard eye candy role. Nothing much changed, and Torrie participated in matches at Survivor Series and Cyber Sunday to no real fanfare.

Wilson suffered a back injury in December 2007 and hasn’t wrestled since - she came to a mutual agreement with WWE for her release in May of this year. Torrie did not contribute anything of significance in her Smackdown run, this was after all, a brand she had previously been on for several years following the original draft split in 2002.

Nonetheless, it is still another example of a drafted wrestler not being with the company a year following the move.

(vi) RAW was then the lucky recipient of Snitsky’s services. Snitsky had previously been heavily pushed over the weaker ECW roster (in a tenure that had only begun in February 2007), but brought back onto RAW after less than six months absence, he was once again hopelessly exposed and outclassed by what is seen as WWE’s premier roster.

When the big RAW addition to his character was the constant referrals to his bad teeth, Snitsky must have known he was in trouble. Not having competed in a PPV match (apart from Royal Rumbles) since 2005, Snitsky is just treading water in the WWE, and his draft to RAW only further buried his career.

(vii) Chris Masters, Smackdown’s penultimate draft pick, was destined to be a casualty of the approaching steroid storm. With his whole character based on maintaining a super human physique, Masters was basically screwed once rigorous drug testing began to be enforced.

While ‘The Masterpiece’ was never a great worker, he was totally lost on Smackdown, having a decent match with Matt Hardy before being struck with two consecutive steroid related suspensions and fired in November.

In a post-Benoit WWE, Masters never stood a chance- another bad draft pick that went wrong due to unforeseen circumstances.

(viii) RAW’s next pick was Mr. Kennedy. This baffled many fans as he seemed to have a built-in feud in waiting with Smackdown Champion Edge, following the loss of his Money in the Bank status prior to his injury lay-off.

Kennedy was still supposed to be pushed to the main event on RAW, being the original benefactor of the ‘son of McMahon’ storyline, but his suspension in the post-Benoit tests totally scuppered these plans.

Kennedy has been stuck in the midcard ever since, and while management still like him, it may now be case that he is too much of a ‘damaged goods’ character to achieve the true breakout star status that many saw in him in early 2007. This was yet another 2007 draft pick derailed by unplanned events, both in and out of the draftee’s control.

(ix) Smackdown’s final pick for the 2007 televised draft was Ric Flair. On the surface, the veteran was an asset to the blue brand, and his first feud with US Champion MVP showed promise, culminating in a decent match at the Vengeance PPV.

However following a decent match with fellow veteran Finlay, and an attempt to put over then-World Champion Great Khali, Flair dramatically walked out of the company. The Nature Boy wanted to be treated as the Legend that he (and almost everyone else) thought he was, and these plans did not include him being a staple of the midcard on Smackdown.

One of Flair’s clauses for his eventual return was to be featured primarily on RAW in the run up to his retirement, which he was, thus making his Smackdown draft and run unmemorable outside of a few curiosity matches.

(x) The final televised draft pick of 2007 was Bobby Lashley moving to RAW. On paper the ECW champion moving to RAW should have created waves along the lines of the Cena/Batista switch of 2005 but there was a problem here.

Lashley had been competing on RAW already for much of 2008, especially in the heavily publicised build up to his match at Wrestlemania XXIII against Youmanga. Thus Lashley’s move and subsequent title vacation meant little compared to what it could have if the brands were kept more separated.

The other problem with Lashley’s official RAW run in 2007 was that it did not last very long. Despite being the standout worker in the Vengeance main event, and having the best match of his career against John Cena at the Great American Bash, Lashely was forced onto the sidelines by injury soon afterwards. He never wrestled for the WWE again and was shockingly released in February of this year.

On paper and in hindsight, the 2007 draft was absolutely disastrous for the WWE.

Of the ten people drafted on television, Booker T (and Sharmell), Chris Benoit, Torrie Wilson, Chris Masters, and Bobby Lashley, are no longer with the company.

Ric Flair left Smackdown within weeks of being drafted and has now retired, Kennedy has stumbled and has yet to fulfil (if he ever will?) his potential, Snitsky is still a jobber with no prospects, Boogeyman has not been on television for almost a year, and the Great Khali is still really tall but that’s about it really.

While the 2004 and 2005 drafts had both positive and negative aspects, there has been no success story for the 2007 version.

The Benoit tragedy loomed over the events following the draft, as it did and still does for much of wrestling today, and this was a huge factor towards the talent exchange’s impact on WWE in 2007.

If one thing is certain about this year’s draft, it seems to be don’t get drafted to ECW! Since its revival in 2006, every worker who has been officially drafted there has suffered, from Kurt Angle to the Boogeyman.

The draft is always an interesting time of the year if you are a WWE fan, with a real potential for exciting new feuds and scenarios. Lets hope they make a better job of it this year!

I’m relatively new to the column writing field, and am eager for any feedback. Please send any to james@wwepreview.com.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed the column!