Is 205 Live WWE Giving Up On The Cruiserweights?

The Cruiserweight division got off to a poor start following the Cruiserweight Classic.

Mick Foley needed cue cards and flubbed his lines, they did a poor job explaining who the competitors were and where they came from, they came out to little to no reaction, and the champion didn’t even appear.

Things haven’t gotten better. The TJ Perkins vs. Brian Kendrick feud was a complete flop as Perkins looked like a geek in multiple ways. Not only did he talk like a geek, he trusted Kendrick despite the fact that Kendrick had already turned on him once before and proved that he couldn’t be trusted. Then they tried do a thing where Kendrick asked Perkins to throw the match, which felt stupid and out of place.

The story of “Kendrick knows this is his last chance, so he’ll do anything to win” is a simple story that they told during the Cruiserweight Classic tournament, and could have more or less re-told over the past month or so. Instead, they tried to get too cute with the story. It didn’t help that Perkins spoke like a video game console come to life and could not be taken serious.

The rest of the Cruiserweights? They’re just there. They’re having random matches on Raw that don’t seem to have much consequence, which is pretty much where WWE is nowadays, so I guess that’s fitting. Rich Swann is still Kofi Kingston-lite, everyone with a mask is getting mistaken for the other guy with a mask, any appeal Cedric Alexander had following his match with Kota Ibushi is now gone, it doesn’t look like Neville is ever going to join the division, which might be a good thing at this point.

Now, WWE has seemingly given up all hope as they’ve added 205 Live to Tuesday night’s on the WWE Network. The show airs immediately after Smackdown, which makes absolutely no sense considering that the Cruiserweights are supposed to be exclusive to Raw. They have three hours of Raw to fill and still, somehow, can’t find time to properly showcase the Cruiserweights because we need more comedy segments with R-Truth and Goldust.

I had no faith in WWE properly utilizing the Cruiserweights after the CWC and their Raw debut did nothing to put me at ease, but this 205 Live deal just feels lazy.

WWE is asking their audience to watch a ton of wrestling in a short amount of time. People can barely make it through a three hour episode of Raw. Now they want to add an extra hour featuring the guys on Raw who they’ve given us no reason to care about. 205 Live may as well be Superstars or Main Event.

Besides the debut and the first main storyline for the title, they’ve done so many things wrong with the Cruiserweight division.

First, it didn’t help that Kota Ibushi and Zack Sabre Jr., the two most popular Cruiserweights prior to the tournament and two semi-finalists in the tournament, didn’t sign with WWE. It felt a little like WWE acquiring WCW but not getting the top stars until much later. Ibushi and Sabre would have given the division a sense of immediate credibility. Gran Metalik, the tournament runner-up, wrestled on the initial Raw, but hasn’t been seen since.

WWE has relied on Brian Kendrick to give the division credibility, and it simply hasn’t worked, which shouldn’t be surprising. Kendrick hadn’t been seen on WWE TV for seven years. And when he was around, it’s not like he was at the top of the card. WWE added Sin Cara to the division, but that’s gone about as well as giving Titus O’Neal a live mic. Again, they tried to utilize a guy who has never been utilized well in order to boost the credibility of the division.

There were rumors that Neville would be added. While Neville has been poorly used since his main roster arrival, at least he’s a former NXT Champion and the fans have shown that they are willing to get behind him, something they’ve never done with Sin Cara. There were also rumors that the Cruiserweights would debut in a segment with Chris Jericho, which could have been great if they went over Jericho. But, chances are, Jericho would have called them vanilla midgets before squashing them one-by-one.

205 Live is a desperate attempt by WWE to utilize the Cruiserweights and give them more than 6-8 minutes on Raw. Maybe it works. Maybe, with a full hour to themselves, they’re able to have great matches that mean something and build stories that bleed over into Raw. Maybe people don’t leave the arena after Smackdown, plenty of people watch on WWE Network, and this somehow works in everyone’s favor.

The more likely scenario is that this whole thing continues to run cold before freezing. That resetting doesn’t work. Blowing on the cartridge doesn’t work. That lightly hitting the system doesn’t work. That WWE just trades everything in or lets it sit in the attic for years until they feel nostalgic again.

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