Rey Mysterio on why 205 Live isn't more popular

[Dukect]

Dec 24, 2017 17:40:44 GMT -5 RedSmile said:

Mysterio is mostly right. This isn't 1995. Thanks to the WCW cruiserweight division, including Mysterio himself, we've seen hurricanranas, suicide dives, 450 splashes, crazy planchas, springboard-based offense, and shooting star presses, for over 20 years now. In 1995, that was unique to the average wrestling fan. Sure, you had guys like Bryan Pillman, Owen Hart, The Rockers, Sean Waltman, and Jushin Liger cameos; but for the most part, that was a wildly new and innovative style of wrestling.

The ensuing generation of wrestlers; the Daniel Bryans, the A.J. Styles, and the Samoa Joes; adopted and innovated a hybrid style that is highly influenced by lucha style and cruiserweight style of wrestling (along with puro and MMA influences). That is the style that has been headlining wrestling shows now for 10+ years, including Mysterio himself.

In 2017-going-on-2018, I can watch cruiserweights and jr. heavyweights anywhere, and it's much better outside of the WWE umbrella. You could make an argument that 205 live is a third or fourth rate cruiserweight division and maybe worse depending on how you feel about Dragon Gate and NOAH.

In NJPW, it's Will Ospreay, KUSHIDA, Marty Scurll, and Hironmu Takahashi, busting their asses and flying all over the place.

In Lucha Underground, it's Fenix, Drago, Jack Evans, Angelico, and until recently, Prince Puma, doing absurd shit like diving off of balconies.

In PWG, it's Ricochet, the Young Bucks, and all sorts of other invitees in glorious spot fests.

In WWE, it SHOULD BE Adrian Neville, Austin Aries, Chad Gable, Finn Balor, Tyler Breeze, Akira Towaza, TJ Perkins, Mustafa Ali, Johnny Gargano, Pete Dunne, Roddy Strong, Hideo Itami, Tyler Bate, Kalisto, Mark Andrews, and Cedric Alexander working their asses off, taking crazy bumps, working high-paced, adrenaline fueled matches. But instead, it's Brian Kendrick grabbing a headlock, it's heatless Ariya Daivari, it's Drew Gulak and powerpoint presentations, it's TJ Perkins' ice cold debut, it's bad wrestler Enzo Amore as the "biggest star"(who was presented as a worthless chump in the Big Cass feud).

It's an obvious purple tinted glass ceiling, where talent has to work both RAW and Smackdown tapings, yet do not get to work the house shows (costing them money). The way the CWs were treated, and presented, in the CWC vs. how they are treated, and presented, for 205 live are night and day.

[Woo]

Dec 24, 2017 12:48:41 GMT -5 Magic knows Black Lives Matter said:

I wish Rey was back in WWE 😤

No way, he's doing his best work in a about 15 years right now.

[BigAl]

Not much cruiser action when their chump is enzo and at this rate he will hold the belt for a looooooong time, so what's the point of watching when none of the cruisers will gchallenge him or beat him?

Enzo being their chump is like if wcw gave vk wallstreet/irs or virgil a long cruiserweight belt reign to and he rarely defend it claiming jj Dillon signed a contract where no cruiserweight can tough him

[Rolent Tex]

Dec 24, 2017 21:53:03 GMT -5 BigAl said:

Not much cruiser action when their chump is enzo and at this rate he will hold the belt for a looooooong time, so what's the point of watching when none of the cruisers will gchallenge him or beat him?

Enzo being their chump is like if wcw gave vk wallstreet/irs or virgil a long cruiserweight belt reign to and he rarely defend it claiming jj Dillon signed a contract where no cruiserweight can tough him

Enzo Amore: Cruiserweight Chump

I smell money.

[Dean-o]

Dec 24, 2017 9:23:29 GMT -5 Welfare Willis said:

You got guys wrestling the same WWE style as the rest of the roster. So they weigh less and are generally smaller... what beside that makes them any different?

Exactly. To me, because they wrestle the same style, and the show looks and feels the same, it just says to me that 205 Live is a show full of dudes who would be slaughtered by the main roster. It doesn’t help that the face of the company, previously spent months being destroyed by Big Cass on a weekly basis.

[schma]

Part of what worked for the WCW cruiserweights, beyond the novelty was that they were part of the roster. Some of these guys went after the TV title or the U.S. championship, they had factions, they had storylines, many of which were about men desperately wanting that cruiserweight belt, even if they'd moved onto other titles. Then consider you had guys like Dean Malenko who was a member of the four Horsemen going for it. Yeah that was latter day Four Horsemen but still, that was something. Jericho had that period where he was struggling to make the weight limit (in kayfabe) because he wanted the belt so badly.

I get the reason they set it apart, they want it to be or feel special. The thing is, cruiserweights weren't the best part of the monday night wars just because of flippy moves and WWE seems to have missed that.

[Dub H]

Dec 25, 2017 5:16:29 GMT -5 schma said:

Part of what worked for the WCW cruiserweights, beyond the novelty was that they were part of the roster. Some of these guys went after the TV title or the U.S. championship, they had factions, they had storylines, many of which were about men desperately wanting that cruiserweight belt, even if they'd moved onto other titles. Then consider you had guys like Dean Malenko who was a member of the four Horsemen going for it. Yeah that was latter day Four Horsemen but still, that was something. Jericho had that period where he was struggling to make the weight limit (in kayfabe) because he wanted the belt so badly.

I get the reason they set it apart, they want it to be or feel special. The thing is, cruiserweights weren't the best part of the monday night wars just because of flippy moves and WWE seems to have missed that.

One person didn't miss it.

["Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay]

Dec 24, 2017 15:12:53 GMT -5 Juice said:

I must be the only person on earth who can get into the division being a seperate brand and entity that doesn't need to job to the Blugeon Bros on Smackdown or Strowman on Raw.

To me it works. They are cruiserweights. The cruiser title is their world title. They are now a touring brand. They are their own thing.

It doesn't work because it's not different enough to be its own thing. If it was like the glory days of x division with gimmick matches added it would be on fire.

Rey mentions ricochet and Ospreay, that shit ia very popular on indies. Adding the uk strong style bruisers, there is so much potential being wasted and not one of them have to cross paths with Big Cass.

I actually agree with you completely, although I still think that the biggest issue is taping it AFTER a Smackdown show.

[horseface]

Dec 24, 2017 12:10:05 GMT -5 Slanted and Enchanted said:

TL;DR version: they should be allowed to wrestle like they did on the CWC.

The logic is they might burn out the crowd and make the main eventers look bad. They dont want the undercard to make the fans less impressed by them. Agree with it or not, thats their mindset Im pretty sure.

[Blindkarevik]

This is my take on it, for better or worse.

You can't emulate the WCW Cruiserweight Division, regardless of how hard you want to portray the Cruiserweights as just that. Putting them on RAW as well as their own show is all fine and good, trying to harken back to Nitro when they were responsible for the workrate and the Stings, Hogans, Lugers, DDPs, etc,... were responsible for the star-powered storylines with minimal action until the PPV. It worked back then, you had RAW as direct competition and you had a lot of great stuff happening. However....

1. AS great as the matches were, I seem to recall most of the commentary focusing more on the main storylines rather than what was happening in the ring. Sometimes they would focus on the action, but even in the middle of a great Malenko vs. Jericho match, you'd hear the commentators say "I don't know, what does Hogan have planned for tonight?" So while we look back and remember how great the matches were, at the time... they were still treated as an afterthought.

2. In the 90s, independent wrestling was still viewed as bush league, nobodies filling tiny buildings and falling over each other hoping they get noticed and actually made into something usable in WWF or WCW. This was the perception. It wasn't until WCW and ECW fell under the WWE's umbrella that the perception started to change and the indies became a viable alternative to Vince.... and that's also when you started to really take notice as to how people are molded, shaped and held back when they go to WWE compared to their time on the indies. You see movesets get altered and whittled down to five or six moves and some of their most notable moves can be completely restricted from them because they are "too dangerous" or too similar to another wrestler's moves. So now, you have guys like Cedric Alexander, who is absolutely phenomenal... but he's still under the WWE umbrella... so you kinda expect a bit less from him because that's what we're conditioned to believe. Back in the 90s, once you hit Monday Nights, you've "made it" and it felt like wrestler's true potential was coming out. These days, it feels like you come to WWE when you wanna make big money for less work... which is absolutely fine, these guys deserve it. But it's not gonna take the world by storm if the reasons you got signed have been stripped away from you.

3. 205 Live is in front of the wrong crowd, period. It should be paired alongside NXT, filmed at Full Sail, just like how they're doing with Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate, Trent Seven and Mark Andrews. The fact the Cruiserweights have their own division and show shows that it's designed to be a niche product, so filming it in front of a niche fanbase and marketed as a niche show would just work. Then intermix the two when the need arises. I don't think anybody would mind seeing Cedric Alexander vs. Alestair Black.

So realistically, I feel like 205 Live needs to be seen as the niche product it is and marketed accordingly because, even though what they're going for is a re-do of the CW division during Nitro... I really don't want it to be remembered like that, because it was only remembered fondly once its time was over.

[BigAl]

Dec 25, 2017 23:44:19 GMT -5 Blindkarevik said:

This is my take on it, for better or worse.

You can't emulate the WCW Cruiserweight Division, regardless of how hard you want to portray the Cruiserweights as just that. Putting them on RAW as well as their own show is all fine and good, trying to harken back to Nitro when they were responsible for the workrate and the Stings, Hogans, Lugers, DDPs, etc,... were responsible for the star-powered storylines with minimal action until the PPV. It worked back then, you had RAW as direct competition and you had a lot of great stuff happening. However....

1. AS great as the matches were, I seem to recall most of the commentary focusing more on the main storylines rather than what was happening in the ring. Sometimes they would focus on the action, but even in the middle of a great Malenko vs. Jericho match, you'd hear the commentators say "I don't know, what does Hogan have planned for tonight?" So while we look back and remember how great the matches were, at the time... they were still treated as an afterthought.

2. In the 90s, independent wrestling was still viewed as bush league, nobodies filling tiny buildings and falling over each other hoping they get noticed and actually made into something usable in WWF or WCW. This was the perception. It wasn't until WCW and ECW fell under the WWE's umbrella that the perception started to change and the indies became a viable alternative to Vince.... and that's also when you started to really take notice as to how people are molded, shaped and held back when they go to WWE compared to their time on the indies. You see movesets get altered and whittled down to five or six moves and some of their most notable moves can be completely restricted from them because they are "too dangerous" or too similar to another wrestler's moves. So now, you have guys like Cedric Alexander, who is absolutely phenomenal... but he's still under the WWE umbrella... so you kinda expect a bit less from him because that's what we're conditioned to believe. Back in the 90s, once you hit Monday Nights, you've "made it" and it felt like wrestler's true potential was coming out. These days, it feels like you come to WWE when you wanna make big money for less work... which is absolutely fine, these guys deserve it. But it's not gonna take the world by storm if the reasons you got signed have been stripped away from you.

3. 205 Live is in front of the wrong crowd, period. It should be paired alongside NXT, filmed at Full Sail, just like how they're doing with Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate, Trent Seven and Mark Andrews. The fact the Cruiserweights have their own division and show shows that it's designed to be a niche product, so filming it in front of a niche fanbase and marketed as a niche show would just work. Then intermix the two when the need arises. I don't think anybody would mind seeing Cedric Alexander vs. Alestair Black.

So realistically, I feel like 205 Live needs to be seen as the niche product it is and marketed accordingly because, even though what they're going for is a re-do of the CW division during Nitro... I really don't want it to be remembered like that, because it was only remembered fondly once its time was over.

problem is, the full sail crowd will crap on enzo being the chump, and not a good heel heat, but more like roman reign/mahal heat

[Deleted]

At the very least 205 Live should adopt the old WCW cruiserweight tag match rules where if someone gets thrown out of the ring their partner can just come in without tagging.

[Deleted]

Dec 24, 2017 8:33:08 GMT -5 héad.casé said:

"I don't know why 205 Live isn't more popular.

Well that saved me and anyone else a read.

[celtics543]

205 Live is similar to the NBA right now. It used to be that only small guys shot 3 pointers so that became something special a small guy could bring to the team. Now every big guy pretty much has the 3 point shot in their repertoire so it's become less special to see a small guy shoot a 3.

Basically the big guys can pretty much do all the cool stuff the little guys can do because the main roster talent are smaller today than they were in the past. Mick Foley is way bigger than most of the main roster guys today and he was basically average sized back in his day. The main roster got smaller so the cruiserweight guys don't stand out anymore.

[Legion]

Rey IS the reason.

So popular and so pushed, his once super high flying lucha style was reduced to four moves and promoted to top tier level. He was the little cruiserweight that could, but in the period where the WWE had no other cruisers that weren't just jobbers to be destroyed, the audience was made to believe they didnt matter because they could all be like Rey, but they were never pushed like it, so why care about their little division?

Rey's popularity and consistent push as the main event cruiserweight who actually stopped doing anything cruiserweight decades before destroyed main stream cruiserweight matches for everyone.

(Or I just really hate Rey and made up a reason to blame him)

[Kevin Hamilton]

Not enough child custody battles.

[Fade is a CodyCryBaby]

How I feel when 205 live matches happen on RAW

[Skeletor]

so basically, let these guys go, or let these guys go.

thanks, Rey

[Deleted]

Dec 25, 2017 15:24:43 GMT -5 horseface said:

Dec 24, 2017 12:10:05 GMT -5 Slanted and Enchanted said:

TL;DR version: they should be allowed to wrestle like they did on the CWC.

The logic is they might burn out the crowd and make the main eventers look bad. They dont want the undercard to make the fans less impressed by them. Agree with it or not, thats their mindset Im pretty sure.

Except with RAW, the 9:45 match is usually the main event & the final hour is filler & Jason Jordan.

You might as well just let that hour be flexible if you're so damn inclined to keep it.

[SirLucas]

I never liked how that whole CWC tournament seemed to be one big hype for Rich Swann. And Swann has yet to live up to the hype.