By Richard Gardner, Torch specialist

Despite the blurred lines between the WWE brands, the annual Draft has become a television event. The fact that WWE personnel often weren't informed of moves ahead of time made for memorable moments that often reshaped WWE entirely.

Switching Jim Ross and John Cena were unforgettable moves from the past that surprised the majority of the WWE audience. However there weren't that many newsworthy stories this Monday, other than the balance of power between the Raw and Smackdown rosters has become ever more pronounced. It has also resulted in some fundamental changes to the makeup of the two shows.

While there was the usual shuffling of the mid-card, two of the company's most accomplished wrestlers, Edge and Chris Jericho, were moved to Raw. For many years, Smackdown has had the reputation of being the "wrestling show," in contrast to the entertainment focus on Monday nights. The Draft has threatened to change the status quo.

Hornswoggle, who has been a staple of Raw's comedy routines, has been moved to Smackdown. This suggests that there will be an increase in the number of comedy segments on Friday nights. His match against Dolph Ziggler on Raw indicates there may be a feud in the same vein as his rivalry with Chavo Guerrero on Raw.

As well as the loss of quality wrestlers, the loss of Edge and Chris Jericho also dilutes Smackdown's star power. In the past, there was an effort to keep Smackdown relatively strong, but this year, the only established main event wrestler who transferred to Friday nights is The Big Show. This may be seen as a positive for Jack Swagger, who will be able to further push his claim for main event status without being overshadowed by the rest of the WWE elite, but the diminished number of top stars hurts Smackdown's credibility.

Of course, there is an underlying reason for this shift of power. Smackdown is moving to Syfy in the fall, and much like ECW, the ratings for NXT have shown an alarming decline in recent weeks that could suggest Syfy is a far from ideal home for wrestling programming.

WWE should be giving their fans as many reasons to watch Smackdown as possible, but the Draft failed to do so. It will take time for the mid-card stars on Smackdown to be seen as legitimate stars equal to Jericho and Edge. If wrestling fans can find the vast majority of the WWE stars on Raw, why should they bother to seek out Smackdown on a network that has proven to be a bad fit for WWE television?

While Smackdown appears to be the big loser from Monday night's episode of Raw, TNA Impact could also be negatively affected by the changes. Impact drew an abysmal 0.5 rating on Monday, suggesting that wrestling fans still see the Draft as an important event, even if the 3.1 that Raw drew indicates that is no longer the case with casual fans. The increase in Raw's star power could point to more struggles for Impact ahead.

Monday's Draft was a chance for WWE to send a couple of top stars to the Smackdown roster, but instead, they did exactly the opposite. While this may have a negative effect on TNA, Impact isn't even close to challenging Raw at this stage. I feel WWE needed to protect Smackdown and promote it as a brand on a similar level to Raw ahead of such a crucial move to Syfy. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

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