WWE announced the following broadcast teams for the Raw, Smackdown, Main Event, and Superstars television shows late Tuesday night.
Raw: Michael Cole, Corey Graves, and Byron Saxton
Smackdown: Mauro Ranallo, JBL, and David Otunga
Main Event: Tom Phillips and David Otunga
WWE Superstars: Tom Phillips and Corey Graves
Powell’s POV: The missing man in the new mix is Jerry Lawler, who is not mentioned in the WWE.com article. WWE did not mention anything about the status of the NXT broadcast team that currently features Phillips and Graves. The dream team for many was Ranallo and Graves, but it’s really good to see that the talented Graves was called up to one of the main shows and I think he will bring something new to the Raw brand if he’s not overproduced. I assume this also means that changes will be coming to the Raw and Smackdown pre-shows. Perhaps The King will replace Graves on the Raw pre-show since he’s already a member of the pay-per-view pre-shows?
I went into this draft thinking WWE needed to FORCE me to tune into live Smackdown on Tuesdays after 3 hours and 15 minutes of Raw the night before. The draft was a disaster on that end and the addition of JBL pretty much is making me not want to watch Smackdown at all. Smackdown, to me, was the land of opportunity. If Kevin Owens lands there, it could elevate him. Same with Cesaro or even Sami Zayn. Instead, Smackdown got NONE of those 3 and EVERYONE on the roster seems destined for being exactly where they were before the draft started. For the life of me, I can’t tell who exactly was elevated tonight? Finn Balor, maybe?
Not even Finn Balor got elevated. Why? Because we were all enjoying the anticipation of what SURPRISE moment the Demon would be unleashed! Drafting him ruined an EXCELLENT opportunity to have a surprise entrant stir up things and start an entirely new storyline. Smackdown SCREWED KO and CESARO! Those two were supposed to go to the Blue show and have a chance to reach their ful potential. Zayn was destined for Raw and will do excellent there… The draft as a sad day. Smackdown got shafted!