10 Worst Ever WWE Superstar Brand SwitchesÂ
WWE has officially announced that the next WWE 'Superstar Shakeup' will take place just a couple of weeks after WrestleMania, on April 15th and 16th in Montreal. It will be the first time that a WWE draft has taken place outside the U.S.
The WWE Superstar Shakeup is generally a pretty exciting show to watch as it features superstars switching brands, and thus providing us with new fresh feuds and matches for RAW and SmackDown. And while it is exciting to see all of this play out, the aftermath doesn't always have the best results.
While some superstars, like John Cena going to RAW in 2005 and Randy Orton to SmackDown in 2011 are often the best decisions that could come out, there have also been some really bad roster switches that have nearly condemned a superstars career. So with that, I have decided to look back over the top 10 worst times that a superstar has been drafted from RAW to SmackDown, SmackDown to RAW, and even some to other brands too.
Note: I will not be ranking these superstars based on how big they and, I will only be including superstars who switched brands during the Draft lottery and Superstar Shakeup. NXT call-ups and roster jumps do not count here.
#10 Kurt Angle To ECW - 2006
Kurt Angle had a bit of a flip flop year right before he parted ways with WWE and joined up with TNA Wrestling in September 2006.
Kurt Angle was drafted from SmackDown to RAW in the summer of 2005 and spent about 6 months on the red brand before making a move back to SmackDown in January 2006. He would win the World Championship upon his return and drop it to Rey Mysterio at WrestleMania 22, and would then feud with Mark Henry until his transfer to the newly revived ECW brand.
I think the best way to put his move to ECW was said by Jim Ross on TV, which was ''Kurt Angle in ECW is like feeding strawberries to a pig'', in other words, it just didn't make sense and was flat out weird. Angle moving to ECW made a little sense at the time because they needed some notable names for the debut of the show, but it still shouldn't have happened, in my opinion. While it is true that Kurt Angle left WWE regardless of where he was that September, I think SmackDown still needed him more at that time.
SmackDown was going through a rough patch at the time of Angle's transfer, as they were already very lite on big players. Batista was still injured, The Undertaker was just making appearances every other week, JBL had just retired, Randy Orton had been suspended and made his TV return on RAW, Chris Benoit was taking a several month leave of absence from TV and then World Champion Rey Mysterio had the worst booking a Heavyweight Champion ever had. So really, Angle's timing of leaving SmackDown came at the worst possible time.