Ever since the two won the second Mixed Match Challenge tournament, R-Truth and Carmella have been one of the most entertaining and legitimately funny duos on WWE television. Unfortunately their partnership came to an end this week, as Friday Night SmackDown drafted Carmella to the Blue Brand during Monday’s WWE Draft while Truth was chosen to stay on Raw. Even though the 24/7 Championship can technically be defended anywhere, the reigning champion will likely have to stay on Monday nights given how the brand split has been firmly re-established. Carmella tweeted that she was “heartbroken” once she heard the news, while Truth retweeted fans lamenting that their partnership was over.
Given that all of the tag teams and trios on the main roster stayed together throughout the Draft, why were these two forced to split up? According to Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer there’s two reasons behind it.
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“If you remember, the 24/7 title, the original idea came from the USA Network,” Meltzer explained on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio. “Which is funny, because remember the original idea was ‘what can we do for the third hour of Raw to keep people from tuning out?’ Of course within weeks the title had nothing to do with the third hour of Raw, but it is a USA Network idea. So Ron Killings, R-Truth, had to stay there.”
“But because Corey Graves got moved to SmackDown, Carmella had to go there,” he added. WWE made a point throughout the two-night Draft to keep couples on the same brand, keeping Becky Lynch & Seth Rollins, Zelina Vega & Aleister Black and Charlotte Flair & Andrade all on the same shows.
Ever since the 24/7 title was first introduced back in May, Truth has utterly dominated its record books with 20 reigns across 90 days. Many of those reigns came about thanks Carmella’s help, and the “Princess of Staten Island” even picked up two reigns of her own.
Here are the full rosters for both Raw and SmackDown following the second night of the Draft.
Raw
- Becky Lynch
- The OC (AJ Styles, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson)
- Drew McIntyre
- Randy Orton
- Ricochet
- Bobby Lashley
- Alexa Bliss
- Kevin Owens
- Natalya
- The Viking Raiders
- Nikki Cross
- The Street Profits
- Seth Rollins
- Charlotte Flair
- Andrade w/ Zelina Vega
- The Kabuki Warriors
- Rusev
- Aleister Black
- Cedric Alexander
- Humberto Carrillo
- Erick Rowan
- Buddy Murphy
- Jinder Mahal
- R-Truth
- Samoa Joe
- Akira Tozawa
- Shelton Benjamin
- Rey Mysterio
- Titus O’Neil
- Liv Morgan
SmackDown
- Roman Reigns
- Bray Wyatt
- Sasha Banks
- Braun Strowman
- Lacey Evans
- The Revival
- Lucha House Party
- Heavy Machinery
- Brock Lesnar
- The New Day
- Daniel Bryan
- Bayley
- Shinsuke Nakamura
- Ali
- Robert Roode & Dolph Ziggler
- Carmella
- The Miz
- King Corbin
- Shorty Gable
- Elias
