From the WWE Rumor Mill: Many women wondered why they weren't drafted to Raw following brand split, as per former writer
What's the story?
The WWE Draft back in the summer of 2016 saw a number of women called up from NXT and drafted over to SmackDown Live to create the roster that has created history a number of times over the past year.
But it seems that many of these women were confused as to why they weren't drafted over to Monday Night Raw since it was considered to be the flagship show.
In case you didn't know...
SmackDown doesn't have the same kind of history as Raw when it comes to the Women's Division so it's understandable that many women wanted to be part of Raw instead of SmackDown Live. But Carmella, Alexa Bliss, Becky Lynch, Natalya, Naomi and Eva Marie were all sent to the Tuesday Night show.
These women were later joined by Nikki Bella after Eva Marie was suspended from the company a few weeks later and never returned. The women then went on to make history a number of times as part of a Tables Match, Steel Cage Match main event and even this year's first ever female Money in the Bank match.
The heart of the matter
Former Managing Lead Writer Tom Casiello was part of the company and the creative process throughout these months and was one of the main writers behind the SmackDown women's storylines at this time.
Casiello recently appeared on The Agenda Podcast where he talked all about the part he played in the Divas Revolution and some of the most controversial parts of the women's storylines over the past few years.
Casiello was part of WWE for seven years and saw a number of changes to both the writing team and the women's division during that time.
He was one of the writers for SmackDown following the brand split last year and revealed that many of the women wondered why they weren't drafted to Monday Night Raw as part of the split, but he was proud of what those six women managed to achieve on the SmackDown brand.
What's next?
Many of the women who were first moved over to SmackDown back in July 2016 are still making up the numbers on the blue brand. The likes of Natalya, Naomi, Becky Lynch and Carmella are all still part of the show and continue to attempt to make the SmackDown Women's Division the most competitive, something that many fans believed after the brand split.
SmackDown Live is called the "Land of Opportunity" and one of the reasons for this is because of the way that all of the women were integrated into the storylines as soon as they had been drafted, something that Raw was never able to do.
Authors take
It makes sense that the women would be disheartened by the fact that Sasha Banks, Charlotte and Nia Jax had all been sent to Raw to create what could have been a superior division, but the booking team couldn't get it right.
Instead, it seems that the SmackDown Women's Division was the one that ended up standing out which means that the women allowed this to fuel their motivation moving forward and it turned into something positive. Raw's Women's Division isn't seen to be any better than SmackDown's right now and it's thanks to the way these women have changed the game over the past year.