WWE Debate: Which WWE Star Needs to Switch Brands the Most?

The 2012 WWE draft may happen, or it may not. 

No one seems to know for sure one way or the other, and the WWE doesn’t seem too concerned with letting us know. 

A lot of wrestling fans don’t care if the draft takes place because “the brand extension doesn’t matter anymore,” but while it doesn’t matter quite as much as it once did, there’s still a need to have some superstars swap brands. 

If there isn’t going to be a 2012 WWE draft, though, then the creative team is still going to have to find a way to flip-flop a couple of superstars between Raw and Smackdown. 

As we’ve seen with Alberto Del Rio, there doesn’t have to be any storyline explanation behind a wrestler’s change to a different brand, but it would be nice to see either a “trade” or “signing” that moves one star from Raw to Smackdown or vice versa. 

Although the brand split doesn’t have a huge impact on storylines (See: Smackdown star Mark Henry challenging Raw star CM Punk for the WWE Championship), cross-brand feuds don’t just happen all the time, and thus, we do need to see a few stars change locations. 

Why? Well, it’s largely to freshen up their characters or give them some new feud opportunities. 

I can think of at least 10 superstars who would benefit greatly from switching brands right now, such as Kofi Kingston and Rey Mysterio. 

But a question I debate every day is this: Which star would benefit the most from a switch to a different brand? 

The Smackdown star who I think really needs to switch to Raw is none other than Cody Rhodes. 

He’s been a member of the blue brand since switching over to Friday nights in the 2010 WWE draft, and over the course of the last two years, he’s had some great character development, going from Legacy member, to “Dashing,” to “Undashing,” to his current heel persona. 

Rhodes has feuded with top guys like Randy Orton and The Big Show on Smackdown, but he’s got two main-event-caliber feuds waiting for him on Raw that could be really, really good: against CM Punk and against John Cena. 

Those are money feuds just waiting to happen, so I’d love to see either one of them in the near future. The main drawback with sending Rhodes to Raw, however, is that he’d get less exposure than he currently does on Smackdown thanks to the Raw “Supershow” format. 

Raw’s mid-card is almost nonexistent, and as a Smackdown star, Rhodes would appear on both shows and perhaps have a better chance of rising to the top of the WWE. 

That’s why I think that the superstar who truly needs a brand swap the most is going to be someone who’s currently stuck in the Raw mid-card. 

My two candidates? The Miz and Dolph Ziggler. 

The Miz seems to currently be stuck in a serious rut, as he had that lengthy losing streak before WrestleMania and hasn’t appeared on Raw whatsoever the last two weeks. Thus, you can see why I think a shift to the blue brand would benefit the former WWE Champion. 

The more I think about it, though, the more I realize that it probably isn’t The Miz being on Raw that’s holding him back. Rather, it’s his lack of progression as a character. 

So, if I want anything to happen to The Miz, it’s some sort of gimmick change or a baby face turn, which I actually think could work out really well for him in the long run. 

Therefore, if not The Miz, then we’re down to one guy who really, really, really (did I say really?) needs to head to Smackdown: The Showoff, Dolph Ziggler. 

Aside from maybe Zack Ryder, there is no more poorly booked or woefully underused character in the WWE right now than Ziggler, who has taken a tremendous tumble down the card over the last several months. 

After having a very good, lengthy United States Championship run in 2011, Ziggler dropped the belt and instantly transitioned into a WWE title feud with Punk, a rivalry that produced multiple really good to great matches. 

But Ziggler was the afterthought in that feud, which centered largely around Punk’s beef with John Laurinaitis, and since losing to Punk at the 2012 Royal Rumble, he has gone from No. 1 contender for the WWE Championship to just another guy. 

Ziggler’s incredible abilities as a bumper/seller have limited him to being used to make baby faces, like Sheamus and Brodus Clay, look good. Although Ziggler did indeed do that, he deserves much better.

The Showoff  is undoubtedly one of the top five in-ring workers in the entire WWE, has a ton of charisma and has made some tremendous strides on the mic over the last year or so. 

Yet he has been relegated to a secondary role on Raw. He has become a forgotten superstar in a forgotten Raw mid-card. 

The solution? Send him to Smackdown, “the land of opportunity.”

The blue brand has proven to be a place where new stars are created or where stars get a second chance to have a run at the top. Just in 2011, we saw Christian, Mark Henry and Daniel Bryan all win their first World titles. 

And the common link between all three was, of course, that they were Smackdown superstars. If those three can hold the World title on Smackdown, then I have no doubt that Ziggler can do the exact same. 

He is one of the most talented wrestlers walking the planet right now, but I sincerely doubt that he’s ever going to get an extended main-event run with the way that Raw is currently situated. 

If the WWE wants to fix that problem, however, then it can do so by taking Ziggler out of mid-card purgatory on Raw and sending him to main-event heaven on Smackdown.

Drake Oz is the WWE Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him onTwitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions (to be answered in the B/R Mailbag) on Formspring.