Night two of the WWE Draft took place on Raw where several top superstars — including NXT talent — were up for grabs. While NXT took losses on night one with Carmelo Hayes officially being drafted to the blue brand and Kiana James to Raw, they still retained much of their roster. That changed significantly on night two with the major losses of former NXT Champions Ilja Dragunov, Lyra Valkyria as well as Blair Davenport.
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Valkyria and Dragunov’s title losses in recent weeks pointed to them potentially being drafted to the main roster. Dragunov was the first call-up of the night for Raw and the entire locker room erupted into applause as he hugged Shawn Michaels and accepted his red had. Valkyria was next, and she seemed absolutely stunned and shocked as she broke into tears, accepting her red hat. Davenport acted much the same, bawling as she accepted her blue hat, the second SmackDown call up from NXT.
Valkyria will be a great fit for the women’s division on Raw, a great babyface talent with a lot of history with the current Women’s World Champion Becky Lynch. It wouldn’t be surprising if the two renewed their rivalry and mixed it up on the main roster. Valkyria was part of the NXT UK brand before it became defunct, then making her way over to the United States in 2022 where she’s been a force to be reckoned with in NXT ever since.ย
Ilja Dragunov has always stood out in the current landscape of NXT, as his talent is that of main roster caliber. With him on the red brand with Imperium’s Gunther and Ludwig Kaiser, he seems like a natural fit for the group and a solid replacement for Giovanni Vinci should they ever decide to go that route. He just dropped the NXT Championship to Trick Williams this past week at NXT Spring Breakin’. As for Davenport, she’s much of the same — an incredibly hard-hitting star that has endless potential in WWE with her technical capabilities, something that’s not often seen in the main roster women’s division. She will undoubtedly add a ton of depth to the SmackDown division.
Though this announcement wasn’t made on television, Dijak revealed on his social media that he had been drafted to the Raw brand shortly after the show went off the air. Dijak was originally with the NXT brand from 2017 until 2020 where he made the move to Raw for the first time. He was eventually brought back down to NXT.
With night 2 of the draft in the books, there were certainly some shake ups outside of NXT. Candice LeRae, Indi Hartwell, DIY, Shinsuke Nakamura, Chelsea Green and Piper Niven all moved from Raw to SmackDown while both brands retained most of its other heavy hitters.
