2011 WWE Draft

The 2011 WWE draft was the eighth annual (ninth overall) draft held by WWE, which took place on April 25. With a core business of professional wrestling, the corporation held a draft to exchange personnel assigned to one of its two television programs (Raw and SmackDown) that are (in terms of storyline) independent brands that represent WWE. The draft aired live on the USA Network on Raw in the United States for two hours in Raleigh, North Carolina from the RBC Center. As a standard for previous drafts, most on-air personnel were eligible to be drafted. A continuation of the draft took place on WWE's official website at 12:00pm Eastern time on the following afternoon.

Matches determined the recipient of draft picks for the television portion of the draft while the continuation of the draft via the Internet was conducted at random. The draft's 30 selections featured 29 wrestlers being exchanged between WWE's two brands. SmackDown received 16 additional members to its roster while Raw received 13. For the first time in draft history, two of the draft picks consisted of the same wrestler (John Cena) being selected to SmackDown with the first pick and back to Raw with the last televised pick.

The Brand Extension storyline was initiated in March 2002, in which WWE's Raw and SmackDown! television programs were made into brands (similar to conferences within a league) to which employees were assigned to; the ECW brand was additionally involved between 2006 and 2009. Annual drafts have followed since this occurrence, except for in 2003. As with past drafts, the purpose of the 2011 WWE draft was to increase television ratings of WWE programming and refresh the rosters for each brand. The 2011 event was confirmed by the RBC Center in April 2011, with WWE officially announcing it on the April 18th edition of Raw. A USA Network executive had also confirmed the event to occur via a press release on the same day of the WWE announcement.

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