The cruiserweight division: why do we need it?

Last year, WWE announced the Cruiserweight Classic. During the breath-taking tournament and before the final match, Triple H announced that the winner would become the new WWE Cruiserweight Champion and that they were bringing back the cruiserweight division. It was amazing news back then. Fast forward to the current day and ask any wrestling fan how it turned out, his/her reply would probably be somewhere along the lines of pretty bad. So, why did a magical experience turn into a bathroom break? Moreover, why do we even need a separate division for them? Let's break it down.

Weight classes in sports serve a vital purpose: fairness. Muscle mass matters, a punch from a guy who weighs 50 kg is not the same as someone who weighs 80 kg. Now, all of us who're over 12 know that wrestling, in fact, is not a sport. So tell me, what is the use of having weight divisions in pro wrestling? Sure, the small guys are going to have a hard time lifting up the bigger ones but they don't have to. WWE is basically telling us that a dead man firing lightning from his hands and a cult leader who crawls upside-down is believable but a fight between two wrestlers differing greatly in size is unrealistic.

"But if the division wasn't there they wouldn't get so much exposure! They would just get lost in the roster." What good is exposure when they can't even do anything with it? If you watch 205 Live, you'll notice that the audience hardly reacts, they couldn't care less. It's just like Velocity or Sunday Night Heat from back in the days. There's another reason why they don't react: 205 Live starts right after SmackDown. What a great idea.

That's not all, if you follow the division for some time, you'll realise just how bland it is. I'm a sucker for high-flying and technical wrestling but I can't emphasise this enough, only wrestling skills will get you so far, you need to have the character and the charisma. Bret Hart was a technical master, yet his character was so cool that even wearing pink didn't bring it down. The Rock and Austin were average wrestlers, resorting to just brawling it out, but that didn't stop them from being one of the bests just because of their characters. I turn on 205 Live and I see a guy dancing and another talking about video games. Some of them don't even have distinguishable characters. Neville is the only one who's interesting in the entire roster which is ironic because he started out without any character when he came to the main roster. This shows that it may not necessarily be the wrestlers' problems.

Now let's talk about the most awful point. WWE has four boxes (shows): RAW, SmackDown, NXT and 205 Live. All of them work by themselves with their unique sets of people. RAW and SmackDown are on equal grounds, they both have prestigious championships and equally talented wrestlers. NXT is a developmental division where wrestlers hone their skills. In all three boxes the wrestlers can jump from one box to the others, the lids are open. The cruiserweight division has the lid closed. They're trapped, they can't jump, and they have to stay there. The normal progression of a talented new WWE wrestler would be to go after the US title, then the Intercontinental title, maybe the Tag titles too, and finally the coveted WWE title. A 205 wrestler? The Cruiserweight title. After that? Nothing. Forget about the WWE title, they can't even compete for the other ones. It's like they've been banished to the dark dimension.

Just imagine, if this is how the cruiserweight division worked back then, we wouldn't get to see Chris Jericho becoming the Undisputed WWF Champion. No Eddie Guerrero vs. Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship. The 5'6" Rey Mysterio beating both Angle and Orton to become the World Heavyweight Champion? In an alternate reality, perhaps. We all know that Vince has a thing for big muscular guys but at least give them a chance to get out of this purple hell! We want to see David vs. Goliath matches, they should've caught on when the entire arena was chanting "YES!".

As I've said before, weight divisions are useless and potentially harmful in wrestling, but if you have to divide, do it how TNA did with the X-division. We all know TNA was great during the early days and the X-division is a fabulous example. Instead of emphasising the weight, they portrayed it as a high-risk division, even their slogan was "It's not about weight limits, it's about no limits". Even heavier guys like Angle and Abyss took part in matches.

How to improve the cruiserweight division? The wrestling's on point, they just need great characters, engaging storylines and the freedom to go out. I know these will not happen because it's WWE, so I hope they're at least happy and getting their well-deserved pay checks.

Shoaib Ahmed Sayam tortures himself by watching fake sports and Vietnamese cartoons. Send help at: fb.com/ooribabamama