Faced with a similarly crowded Universal and Intercontinental Title picture, Bobby Roode & Chad Gable didn’t quite break through as singles stars, though they eventually found success as a pair, winning the Raw Tag Team Championships and proving to be able foils for the revitalized Revival. But Rousey’s singular dominance and the brief return of The Bella Twins meant all four of those women could only climb so high. THE MIDDLE: Natalya and The Riott Squad worked great as low-risk, high-reward picks The Queen of Harts helped bring Ronda Rousey along and Liv Morgan and Sarah Logan have begun to develop into legitimate players. To their credit, all four of those Superstars ended up turning a corner eventually - Ryder just won the Raw Tag Team Titles with Curt Hawkins Kanellis is doing excellent work on 205 Live Jinder made a very entertaining run in the Mixed Match Challenge and Mojo is set to re-emerge any second - but it’s safe to say none will be looking back on 2018 as a career year. Same for Mojo Rawley, who beat up a cheeseburger and promptly went quiet. Jinder Mahal, coming off a career year on SmackDown, lost the United States Title immediately upon coming to Raw and got lost in the shuffle quickly thereafter. Mike Kanellis ended up getting traded away from Raw entirely. Zack Ryder infamously didn’t have a match on Raw until the New Year’s Eve episode. There were, objectively, a few moves that didn't pan out as expected. (Owens has since resurfaced on SmackDown LIVE Zayn just came back and his destination is as yet unclear.) Bringing over Breezango and The Ascension was a smart play to get the viral cache of “The Fashion Files” on Raw, but the beloved spinoff’s inexplicable shuttering left both teams adrift. THE BAD: What was setting up to be Raw’s masterstrokes in the Shake-up ended up collapsing when both of Team Red’s big-name acquisitions - Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn - suffered injuries that put them out of action for the better part of a year. McIntyre has proven every inch the player that he worked to remake himself as, all he’s lacking is a signature victory to take him to the next level. That’s pretty remarkable.Ī step or two below Corbin is Drew McIntyre, who came in from NXT as the muscle to SmackDown acquisition Dolph Ziggler and ended up breaking out as a punisher in his own right, though he stalled his own momentum on more than one occasion by forming superteams to fight The Shield. Hate on him all you want - and it’s clear you hate him pretty substantially - but he went from six-foot-eight also-ran to the guy who retired Kurt Angle in the span of a year. But his appointment to the post of Constable reinvigorated his career and opened the door for the former United States Champion to reinvent himself as the show’s most loathed, non-McMahon antagonist since 2010-era Michael Cole. THE GOOD: Is it strange to say the undisputed winner of the 2018 Superstar Shake-up was Baron Corbin? The Lone Wolf had been treading water as a beatable bully even before he was shuttled over from SmackDown LIVE, and he seemed destined for a similar fate on Raw. STRATEGY: With a main-event scene that seemed firmly set in stone - Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Brock Lesnar, Finn Bálor and Braun Strowman - Stephanie McMahon and Kurt Angle’s strategy was to bring over one or two big names, back them up with reliable hands and use the rest of their picks to stock young talent that they could develop down the line. Let’s see how things … shook out, shall we? Next week will be the third Shake-up in the company’s history, so before the shifts are made and the deals are signed, we thought we’d take a look back at the 2018 edition and grade the moves made by Raw and SmackDown management. The gist of it is, instead of a full draft, Raw and SmackDown shuffle several Superstars between their rosters in the wake of each WrestleMania to revitalize competition, give talent a chance to develop and maybe add a little extra oomph to their shows where required. The Superstar Shake-up has become a crucial moment in WWE’s calendar year since the 2016 Brand Extension.
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