We noted over the weekend here on eWrestlingNews.com that several new touring announcements following the WWE Draft were advertising Cesaro, Enzo and Cass for WWE SmackDown. They were featured on Tour 1 (The SmackDown Tour). WWE RAW was listed as Tour 2. All of the other names that were drafted on Tuesday night fell in line with the two tours except for those three guys.
With that being said, WWE posted a video of Cesaro just before the WWE draft where he clearly said he wanted to be on the WWE SmackDown brand with Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon in charge, Cesaro revealed that WWE SmackDown would “focus on wrestling and talent” and that’s exactly what he wanted. Cesaro said RAW was “the bad guy show”. Of course, Chris Jericho pinned Cesaro clean on this week’s WWE SmackDown broadcast, which then led to Cesaro being the 28th draft pick, selected for RAW.
Fast forward to the post-WWE Draft show on the WWE Network, where Cesaro seemed upset with being drafted to RAW. He seemed to “shoot” in a backstage promo with WWE announcer JoJo. A transcript and video of his post-WWE Draft promo can be seen below:
“Just looking at the rosters and what the GMs talked about yesterday how SmackDown is going to be the wrestling show and all about in-ring product and all about the Superstars and not necessarily about the GMs and that whole drama, I feel like I probably would have been a better fit for SmackDown. But just like in my career so far here, there’s always a little stumble block or whatever that I have to overcome, so, um… I’m looking forward to being on the flagship product… trying to see the positive, being on the flagship product, WWE Raw, that’s where Cesaro belongs. I think Raw going forward needs to be about the Superstars, it needs to be about the performers in the ring and not about how Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley co-exist. They need to be there to mediate and make the best show, but that does not need to be the focus. So, the focus should be on the Superstar who got drafted. We have Seth Rollins, we have New Day, we have Finn Bálor coming up from NXT – those are the people we should be here talking about. But we’re talking about Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley which is annoying to me.”
Why Cesaro is my favorite in WWE. pic.twitter.com/YJo8OccDo7
— DTAM (@DeathToAllMarks) July 20, 2016
It should be noted that WWE never uploaded Cesaro’s post-WWE Draft promo to their YouTube.com channel, as they did with all the other draft picks.
WWE women’s wrestler Sasha Banks agreed with Cesaro promo, tweeting the following:
You’re speaking my language https://t.co/0cpHvzXiUm
— $asha Bank$ (@SashaBanksWWE) July 20, 2016
Also, WWE had Cesaro’s information wrong during the LIVE WWE SmackDown broadcast, listing him as 280 pounds (he’s normally billed at 232 pounds). They also listed his WWE debut as 1999 (he debuted in 2012) and said he was a “9-time tag team champion” (he’s only held the tag titles once).
