Backstage News On Whether Another WWE Draft Is Coming In 2023

2022 marked the first year without a WWE Draft since 2015, and at this point there's no certainty another one is coming.

Fightful Select is reporting that, as of Friday afternoon, "over a dozen talent" they spoke to have thus far not been informed that a draft is coming in 2023, nor have they received any indication of when such a draft might occur. The update follows months of rumors that a draft was on the horizon, fueled by the fact that there had been a draft every year in recent years and the presumption that Paul "Triple H" Levesque would want to set his own "WWE Raw" and "WWE SmackDown" rosters after taking over WWE creative following the brief departure of Vince McMahon, who "retired" last summer amidst a storm of allegations regarding hush money payments made to cover up potential charges of sexual abuse. However, such a roster reset never took shape. Fightful's sources at Fox and USA Network had previously told them both networks prefer distinct rosters as facilitated by WWE's brand split, but Fightful said they've heard less such talk since Levesque took over. Indeed, Levesque's tenure at the helm of WWE creative has been marked by a seeming ambivalence toward the brand split, as talent has crossed over between "Raw" and "SmackDown" fairly regularly over the past eight months. It's also notable that there have been no recent indications of WWE splitting up the WWE and Universal Championships, or the "Raw" and "SmackDown" Tag Team Championships. Both sets of titles are currently unified.

The most recent WWE Draft happened in October 2021 and is most memorable for swapping "Raw" Women's Champion Charlotte Flair and "SmackDown" Women's Champion Becky Lynch, necessitating a notoriously awkward segment in which the two women exchanged their branded title belts.