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F4D Radio Discussion: Cruiserweight Division & Weight Classes

990 views 19 replies 19 participants last post by  Genking48 
#1 ·
So I was listening to Figure 4 Daily Radio with Alvarez & Lance Storm and they made a few interesting points that I wanted to share with you to see your opinions on this.

The first point they discussed was how the cruiserweight division is meaningless to an extent because a lot of the "heavyweights" are high flyers or do moves off the top rope. They mentioned frequent flyers like AJ Styles & Rollins, Owens doing frog splashes and moonsaults, Cesaro doing a 619, and even Fella and Rusev jumping off the top rope at times. What they were saying was that it basically takes the shine off the cruiserweight division because they are not doing anything unique. It's just a bunch of small guys that aren't over.

What you think? I agree with them to an extent but I think those cruiser weight guys have a level of athleticism that can make them stand out regardless of this. WWE just needs to provide stories for these guys instead of random matches.

The second point they discussed was the idea of weight classes similar to UFC. The idea was that UFC's division classes is all about who the star is. The middleweight divisions have been hotter than the Heavyweight division for a while because they had the bigger stars and WWE should follow the same format since it works for UFC.

They suggested putting anyone under 205 pounds in the cruiserweight division regardless of how big of a star they are. So if Balor, AJ, Ambrose, and even Rollins are less than 205, they go in the cruiserweight division. And you make the cruiserweight title an equal with the WWE title the same way UFC belts are equals because it's all about the stars, not the belts.

This idea sounds good on paper, but I'm not sure it would work because WWE has conditioned their audience so much over these decades and I don't see people buying the cruiserweight title as an equal to the WWE title. Reversing 30 years of conditioning is very hard to do.

What you guys think?
 
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#5 ·
I complained about this a lot on Sunday and Monday. These Cruiserweights do nothing to stand out. They're just a bunch of bland small guys offering nothing special to the product. I wanted the Cruiserweight Division back for fast paced matches to kick off the show. Their debut was incredibly poor; waiting until the end of the show when the crowd is too drained to give a fuck, and Foley making them seem even more random with his terrible introduction speech. The title match was slow and boring too. Those in favor of the way it went want to argue they showed psychology. Well, psychology doesn't have to be boring. Cruiserweights are meant to be small and fast high flyers. If these guys aren't flying all over the place or having fast paced matches, then I don't care about them and don't want them here. Have them start the show with a bang or don't bother.
 
#3 ·
There needs to be some sort of distinction between the cruiserweights that wrestle freely and the ones confined in the CW division. Like, we've seen Sheamus lose to guys like Sami Zayn, who he himself could contend in the CW division right now, but let's say that TBK or Cedric Alexander wrestles him; they should bring about the fact that they're not used to wrestling outside the division and create the illusion that they're way out of their depth against heavier opponents.
 
#7 ·
WWE doesn't understand what their fans want. They give us CW division. But they give it to us on THEIR shitty terms. Making these guys tone it down and work the shitty WWE style in to their matches make the CW's existence a waste. The only reason they exist is because people WANT to see them flying around. No one wants to see them working matches that WWE makes the rest of their wrestlers work with boring restholds, and then an absolute avalanche of nearfalls and kicking out finishers in the last 10 minutes of the match that make WWE marks forget the first 15 minutes of the match that was boring, and only remember the last 10 minutes and tricks them into thinking it was a "GREAT MATCH!!111" when 80% of the match was boring trash.
 
#8 ·
They got turned on during RAW already because of a very simple reason: Nobody knows who the fuck they are. And they already had four nobody CW's put on a match earlier in the show. So fans had enough of it. They'll get turned on during every show if that's what they're going to do, and especially if the rest of them are as bland and uninteresting as TJ Perkins. They failed hard in WCW at times for the same reasons until savior Jericho came in.

Weight Classes would never work in wrestling. It's kayfabe. It's unnecessarily thinning the roster even more than it already is, to spam even more of the same matches over and over again than you already do. At least now, guys of different size/weights can move around the card and work different people. You NEED smaller guys to work with bigger guys. If Roman only got to work guys his size he'd be putting on the WOAT matches on a weekly basis. Guys like him or any other average worker need the smaller guys there to bump and sell for them.

There's things they can learn from UFC. But that's more about how to SELL a fucking fight or cut a fucking promo. Trying to be a kayfabe UFC would just cause fans to bail on them even more for being such a dopey ripoff.
 
#10 ·
205lbs is a number I'm highly skeptical of. 190 should probably be the real number. That'd make this discussion easier.

But generally, I think the TNA X Division (the only truly lasting thing I'll take from TNA) did it better - not weight limits, no limits. I think the term "cruiserweight" shoehorns them into something they don't actually know how to produce.
 
#19 ·
They suggested putting anyone under 205 pounds in the cruiserweight division regardless of how big of a star they are. So if Balor, AJ, Ambrose, and even Rollins are less than 205, they go in the cruiserweight division. And you make the cruiserweight title an equal with the WWE title the same way UFC belts are equals because it's all about the stars, not the belts.
I can't get behind this.
 
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#2 ·
I'd be for it in theory, but in reality WWE can't even keep its Women stars on par in their own division with their normal male WWE Supserstars(tm) in the way NXT has been able to do.

WWE's ideas of splitting talent up seems to be splitting them up by Brand (Raw, Smackdown, Women, Cruiserweights, NXT) and not by weight, so they kind of already have the idea of different categories for wrestlers, but they're unable to use those divisions to create new stars in the way they should.

I totally agree with them on restricting the non-Cruiserweights from high risk moves. It's so backwards if the Cruiserweights are the ones that can't do the flashy stuff and it hurts the bigger stars to be doing topes constantly.
 
#9 ·
I don't like the idea of weight classes in wrestling because it would eliminate a lot of potential matchups. You would never see Sami Zayn vs. Randy Orton, for example, or Finn Balor vs. Bray Wyatt, because one would be a cruiserweight and one a heavyweight.
 
#13 ·
Yeah I say away with the whole weight limit idea. Part of what makes wrestling so great is that it isn't bogged down by these limitations. I'm all for increasing the prestige of titles though. Lord knows that WWE could do more with that.

That all comes down to booking like everything else in wrestling. WWE need create good/great stories for these cruiserweights to perform in. Let their personality shine through and yes, everyone does have a personality. The cruiserweight title might not be at the level of the world championships but having another decent second-tier title is fine.

Another thing, the stars like AJ, Ambrose, Rollins, Balor are big stars so labelling them as cruiserweights making them exclusive to that division just limits the decent stories that can be made. You do that and sure the cruiserweight division gets boosted but the 'heavyweight' division suffers. It shouldn't suffer for the sake of the cruiserweight division. Let these new cruiserweights carve out a niche of their own and create something people are raving about like guys like Zayn, Neville and Dallas and gals like Charlotte, Sasha and Bayley did for NXT.
 
#14 ·
They should make the CWC just as important as the UC. But they shouldn't have weight limits as like others have said it make things boring after awhile and pro wrestling is not a legit sport, but still it can be presented that way though. So the cruiserweight division can be made to look as strong as the main event scene. They could have matches main event MNR and RAW exclusive ppvs.
 
#15 ·
I feel it's been two weeks, way too early to suggest big changes. Characters will build (hopefully) over the next 2 months. It's a brand new division.

As far as doing it like the X division I don't think it works. The original X division worked not only because of the matches, so well because it was the only other singles title. No weight limit made sense for if.

If you make it no limit it's essentially a TV title, which could in theory work. But I feel like unless it's going to be defended every week and guarantee a shot at the US title after a certain number of defenses it would be useless to have a TV title tier title.

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#17 ·
I wouldn't go this far, but I do think they need to reevaluate the branding of "Cruiserweights" who are 205 and under. Does anybody see Jon Jones, Daniel Cormier, or Rumble Johnson and go, "hey these guys look like Cruiserweights."? These guys are monsters, but yet when Ibushi or Cedric are 205 they're "Cruisers".
 
#18 ·
This idea sounds good on paper, but I'm not sure it would work because WWE has conditioned their audience so much over these decades and I don't see people buying the cruiserweight title as an equal to the WWE title. Reversing 30 years of conditioning is very hard to do.
It's actually not hard at all, you just make them the focus of the tv shows and keep closing the PPV's with the Cruiserweight match and people will catch on pretty fast.
 
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