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Post by Oh Cry Me a Screwball on Dec 30, 2017 0:58:28 GMT -5
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 You do realize that Full Sail was the first audience Enzo ever got over with, right?
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Post by HMARK Center on Dec 30, 2017 9:04:58 GMT -5
Going to parrot what a couple of you guys have already said.
1. Like Rey was getting at, they wrestle a style too close to that of the heavyweights, both because a lot of the heavies are more agile these days and because the cruisers are being kind of relegated to a toned down style of what they're capable of. We don't need these guys to kill themselves every single week, but there are ways to make a cruiserweight product more interesting and dynamic, not to mentioned differentiated from the rest of your programming, without fully sacrificing the health and well-being of your performers.
2. Since WWE doesn't have a more sports-centric presentation of its product, having separated divisions can be very difficult for them, booking-wise. The simple explanation for keeping the heavies and cruisers apart most of the time should just be "different weight classes, duh", but since WWE is more entertainment-based it means that spectacle is a big part of what they do, and keeping the cruisers away from your biggest stars all but guarantees they'll lack in that factor.
To be fair, there are other promotions, such as numerous puro companies, where they DO allow heavies and juniors to mix it up more, yet even in those promotions the heavies usually win. For example, if Los Ingobernables de Japon face off against a team representing CHAOS, and LIJ has BUSHI on their side and CHAOS has Gedo, you can safely bet that BUSHI or Gedo will be the one taking the pin for his team, likely being defeated by a heavyweight. Pro Wrestling NOAH has a better history on this front, but it can still happen there, as well.
Difference is, those juniors still get to look competitive with the heavies; yes, even the top juniors end up a tick below in the pecking order because of this, but they still stood up to the bigger guys, still got signatures and near falls on them, still looked like they belonged in the same ring. Sure, if the size disparity gets TOO big you might have to book differently, but that should be an exception, not a rule. Plus the really over juniors even get to challenge sometimes for heavyweight titles since there's no rule saying somebody under the heavyweight designation can't pursue the big belt, you just can't do the other way around. If I recall correctly it's how Naomichi Marufuji first became GHC Heavyweight Champion in NOAH.
That said, we do have to acknowledge some clear differences between WWE and many other promotions: that WWE heavyweights are often much bigger than those in other promotions, at least on average. But again, as some of you have rightly pointed out, that's nowhere near as common an issue today as it once was: WWE's heavy division now includes numerous former ROH World Champions, many of whom aren't too far over, say, 220 pounds. There's a Strowman here or there, but it's not like the early 2000s anymore. Samoa Joe's run as ROH champion and in TNA saw him having great matches with smaller guys, and now Joe is among the big bruisers in Raw's main event scene: it can definitely be done.
What I would do? Make it clear that the IC and US belts are openweight titles. Go ahead and make the WWE and Universal belts heavyweight, keep the cruiser belt, but ANYONE should be able to compete for the IC or US belts. It's fine if heavies still maintain an advantage over the smaller guys and beat them more frequently than the other way around, but keep it competitive and, again, make it look like the smaller guys belong.
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trollrogue
Hank Scorpio
Nashville City of Music!!
Posts: 5,601
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Post by trollrogue on Dec 30, 2017 20:44:14 GMT -5
Pretty much. Like 90% of what the 205 guys do the big guys on the main roster can also do. I feel like 205 is too confined to the WWE style.
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Post by Kevin Dunn on Dec 31, 2017 1:40:52 GMT -5
People just aren’t interested in seeing vanilla midget’s doing flips.
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Post by cabbageboy on Dec 31, 2017 9:03:31 GMT -5
I think you can become numb to wild acrobatics if you see it done enough. If a crazed match like Ospreay/Ricochet happened in WWE the crowd would go totally nuts for it the first time around, but if you saw it 20 times it would lose its luster. Kind of like WCW's cruiser stuff by 1999. I recall a wild 4 way with Rey, Juvi, etc. on a Nitro in 1999. It got about 20+ minutes and these guys just killed each other for all of it....and the crowd didn't react to any of it.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jan 1, 2018 7:56:29 GMT -5
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. How do you figure? He didn't even make it to the semi-finals. Also hard to live up to the hype when you're busy imprisoning women in cars; doubt that hype is ever going to be lived up to. I think you can become numb to wild acrobatics if you see it done enough. If a crazed match like Ospreay/Ricochet happened in WWE the crowd would go totally nuts for it the first time around, but if you saw it 20 times it would lose its luster. Kind of like WCW's cruiser stuff by 1999. I recall a wild 4 way with Rey, Juvi, etc. on a Nitro in 1999. It got about 20+ minutes and these guys just killed each other for all of it....and the crowd didn't react to any of it. I remember reading in an old Observer extract something like 'Juvi and Rey had the same great match they've been having every week for three years.'
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