-- WWE's draft launches tonight with night one on Friday Night Smackdown and fightfulselect.com released a story today with some backstage insight into what is known.
-- According to their report, as of Wednesday, WWE wrestlers had not been told about how the draft would work or what brands they would be landing on or whether the company had plans to completely shake-up the roster or simply move a few key players around. In fact, talent didn't even know what day they would be eligible to be drafted until WWE released their social media post listing the pool of eligible wrestlers on each night. As of earlier today, talent still had no idea where they were headed, however, it was expected that by this afternoon, communication would follow.
-- WWE recently rebranded their titles and removed the verbiage "Raw" or "Smackdown" from the women's titles in preparation for the draft in order to give them more flexibility on where to place each wrestler and avoid any awkward or unrealistic trades that have had to go down in the past. However, the company then ended up announcing that champions are locked into the brand they are currently on. The women's tag team champions are the only title holders eligible to be drafted and while they will have a "home brand", the duo would essentially still float around on both shows.
-- NXT names were intentionally hidden in WWE's graphic in order to maintain a surprise factor, but there are most definitely plans to include NXT talent in the draft as evidenced by WWE's preview which states as such. Within the NXT brand, there are some people who are not "too optimistic" with talent and officials somewhat fearing that the brand might be "picked dry" in the draft and that those who are ultimately called up, WWE won't have any set creative plan for them - something which has been heavily criticized in the past.
-- As has been reported before, there is also the possibility that wrestlers may find themselves moved from the main roster to NXT and the fightful report noted that there have been reservations that some talent could take that as a sign of a demotion. However, internally there are supporters of this who feel that some wrestlers would benefit from a run in NXT especially with the show headed for their debut on the CW network later this year.
