WWE Draft, Wellness Policy and More from the Freedom Mailbag

Roman Reigns is officially free. His highly publicized 30-day suspension is over, and a lot has changed since he went away.

Reigns will enter the brand extension era as the sixth overall pick of the WWE Draft, and he'll be fighting an uphill battle to earn the trust of WWE officials while still trying to earn the respect of sanctimonious fans.

After violating WWE's wellness policy, however, one has to wonder if Reigns is looking at the policy sideways after Brock Lesnar's ongoing scandal in the UFC.

Preferential (Drug) Treatment?

"

@ThisIsNasty How does WWE strike an equal balance between Adam Rose, Reigns and Lesnar? Well, Reigns and Lesnar anyway.

— V (@MrVDawg) July 21, 2016"

There is no equal balance. A 2007 interview with Senior Investigative Counsel David Leviss revealed WWE's wellness policy appears to have a clause that would allow it to exclude part-time performers from testing.

The clause stated: "This Policy, as it may be amended from time to time, is applicable to and binding upon all WWE Talent under contract to WWE who regularly perform in-ring services as a professional sports entertainer ('WWE Talent')."

After Lesnar's current doping scandal with the UFC, one can only assume he was not tested under WWE's wellness policy. You mean to tell me WWE's drug test could reportedly find Adderall in Reigns' system (per Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter; h/t WrestlingInc.com) but not the banned substances that caused Lesnar to fail two out-of-competition tests?

Bottom line, WWE's wellness policy seems to be legit when it comes to full-time performers. If WWE could tinker with its policy, there's no way Reigns, an embattled heir apparent championed by the WWE brass, would have been sitting at home for the past 30 days. Still, fair or not, a loophole seems to render part-time performers exempt.

The NXT Era

NXT is finally being confronted with the tall task of living up to its mission statement as a farm league. With most of the aging independent wrestling veterans (Finn Balor, Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn), in addition to homegrown stars (American Alpha, Enzo and Cass), now on the main roster, NXT has to rebuild.

NXT can build around familiar faces such as Samoa Joe, Bayley, Shinsuke Nakamura and Austin Aries, but it needs to begin implementing fresh new talent who can continue to carry the brand long after these stars are gone.

It feels like the NXT roster is down to its last line of defense. Most of the women's division, the NXT tag team division and the NXT Championship division that made NXT Takeover a must-see live special are either on Raw or SmackDown. NXT is also being threatened by the Cruiserweight Wrestling Classic, which is currently housing talents who would otherwise be vying for time in Full Sail.

Thankfully, the CWC is a temporary tournament, which draws a similar fanbase of hardcore wrestling hipsters. WWE has done a nice job of not only showcasing the in-ring skills of these cruiserweights, but also telling their stories one by one.

A handful of these talents figure to establish themselves more than others, and once the tournament is over, they will be ready-made to help the rebuilding efforts of a roster in transition.

Too Many Championships on the Flagship?

Not at all. Remember, SmackDown is only two hours, so it only has so much time for all those championships. In fact, the runtime and having fewer titles will make SmackDown less of a watered-down show with more of a focus and direction.

SmackDown is the current home to the WWE Championship and the WWE Intercontinental Championship, while Raw currently hosts four champions: The cruiserweight champion, the United States champion, the tag team champions and the women's champion. It's also highly likely Raw will add another world championship, which would bring the total to five.

While having two championships will give SmackDown an old-school feel, having so many championships on Raw will bog the product down.

Hopefully, WWE's answer to this dilemma is to allow the women's champion and tag team champions to appear on both shows instead of potentially moving forward with nine championships.

Alfred Konuwa is a Featured Columnist and on-air host for Bleacher Report and Forbes. Like him on Facebook.