WWE Gets Called Out By Fans For Repeating Roster Lineups From Years Past

The 2020 WWE Draft saw a fair number of wrestlers move brands between Monday Night Raw and Friday Night SmackDown. And while each show’s new respective lineups provide the opportunity for new feuds going forward, some fans couldn’t help but notice a pattern forming. Specifically, that big chunk of the top stars from Raw and SmackDown’s 2016 rosters had been slotted together again and had simply jumped to the opposite brand. Reddit user u/SnowSX3 took to the Squared Circle Subreddit on Monday morning with a graphic illustrating that point while jokingly quoting Vince McMahon’s famous line about the WWE Draft, “It’s time to shake things up around here!”

The graphic included stars such as Roman Reigns, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Seth Rollins, Bray Wyatt, AJ Styles, Randy Orton and Alexa Bliss.

In WWE’s defense quite a few of these wrestlers have seen significant character changes in the past four years, most notably Reigns, Wyatt, Bayley, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn. Plus new top stars like Drew McIntyre and Asuka have also been added into the mix. However, it doesn’t help that WWE just crowned Randy Orton as the new WWE Champion and The Miz as the new Mr. Money in the Bank, potentially setting up the exact same scenario from 10 years ago.

Do you agree with the Reddit thread’s observations? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments!

Back in July Vince McMahon talked about WWE’s need to build new stars during the company’s Annual Shareholder’s Meeting.

“Sure, I mean you want to continue to build stars no matter what time. It is so, as Paul [Triple H] just mentioned about NXT talent,” McMahon said. He has done an extraordinary job of creating new stars, and as they continue to evolve, they’ll continue to come up to Raw and Smackdown. So there’s this influence of new superstars coming into both Raw and Smackdown, and in addition to that, the ways that we now promote talent in a more effective way, [with] digital and social media, as opposed to the normal way. We do not have a live audience and of course that to us is paramount. They’re like the third performer in the ring, in terms of our interaction with our audience. So nonetheless it is a good time to continue with the digital and social imprint and this land grab that we have, which is substantial. We continue that, and again new stars coming up.”