There was a lot of potential when WWE introduced its brand-new cruiserweight division, but with bad booking, it was in the dumps. Then came the decision to move both the division and the championship to NXT, which looked to promise a new lease of life on a failing concept, only for it to not really mean too much in the long run. With the retirement of the NXT Cruiserweight Championship, it is safe to say that it has mostly been a big waste of time, especially when considering what it could have been.
WWE Squandered The Cruiserweight Division On Raw
2016 saw WWE put on their special Network event, the Cruiserweight Classic, which was one of the most entertaining pieces of programming in quite some time, bringing in the top cruiserweight talents from around the world, including the likes of Zack Sabre Jr and Kota Ibushi. This tournament, along with the subsequent inclusion of many of the talents from the bracket moving to both Raw, and their very own show 205 Live, it seemed as though WWE was trying to recapture the magic that WCW did when it came to cruiserweights.
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However, despite having hugely talented wrestlers, WWE invested no storylines or characters into them, giving limited time during matches on Raw. The division was on a downward spiral for a couple of years, with great wrestling but a lack of care from the audience due to the 205 roster being often neglected. The championship itself managed to get featured now and again on PPV, but it was usually demoted to the Kick-Off shows. This would be the second time that WWE had squandered a great bunch of cruiserweight wrestlers.
The Move To NXT Was Initially A Positive
When NXT made the move to TV in 2019, WWE made the decision to transition the Cruiserweight Championship to the developmental brand, in an attempt to fill up the two hours that the weekly NXT shows were becoming, in hopes to go head-to-head with AEW Dynamite. This was viewed as a positive move. NXT at the time was a brand that put focus on in-ring stories, giving extended time and opportunities to smaller guys, with huge respect from both the brand and the fans when it came to great wrestling. 205 Live stuck around too, to give the workers more time to wrestle.
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The era kicked off with Lio Rush and Angel Garza battling over the belt, with some incredible matches showcasing the fantastic chemistry that the pair had with each other. This start to the NXT Cruiserweight Championship was great. However, Garza was boosted to the main roster without being given a chance to flesh out his character, and Rush was soon gone from the company. Garza would drop the belt to Jordan Devlin of NXT UK.
Allowing the title to be defended on both NXT and NXT UK opened a whole new realm of opportunities and avenues for the belt and could have made it an interesting championship that traveled through multiple brands, creating unique matchups. However, the worldwide pandemic closed borders and meant that the belt was confined to NXT UK. Because of this, NXT drew up a tournament to decide a new champion. Whilst this promised an eventual unification between Devlin and the new champion, it ran the risk of devaluing the belt.
The NXT Cruiserweight Championship Won’t Be Remembered
The tournament was a round-robin format, but it was unfortunately dominated by the questionable inclusion of Drake Maverick’s actual release into the story of the tournament. Making note of this when WWE had just undergone a mass release of talent, rendering many jobless, tainted a lot of the matches - especially the final, which was won by Santos Escobar. Escobar turned heel, unmasking, and shedding his El Hijo Del Fantasma persona, and was a good choice as champion, but despite a long reign, it wasn’t too memorable, with none of his matches standing out as the best in NXT.
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The matches were fine, of course, but NXT at the time was suffering from its lack of audience, with matches having little heat, and a repetitive nature spread across the card, with not a lot of differentiation in match types. A never-ending feud with Isiah ‘Swerve’ Scott did the reign no help either. Escobar would win the unification match against Devlin, which was yet again a good match, though there wasn’t too much excitement going in or coming out, as the title hadn’t meant too much.
With NXT being jam-packed full of championships, the belt often felt second-best and lost in the shuffle. This was especially true in the recent reigns of Kushida and Roderick Strong, where it was proven that the revamped NXT 2.0 was simply not the place for high-flying, hard-hitting, cruiserweight action. When looking back at the history of the title, there is little to call back to and say, ‘that was memorable’, and when having an entire division and title for over two years, that shows a complete waste.
