The Cruiserweight Division is now a part of Raw, but so far WWE hasn’t done the best job at making fans care about the men involved. How can they turn the tables?
The Cruiserweight Classic was one of the best things that WWE has presented in the last few years. From top to bottom the matches were fantastic, with so many guys proving worthy of the spot that WWE afforded them in the tournament. During the WWE Network exclusive CWC, a selection of the participants was signed to WWE contracts, with some of them put straight into the newly formed Cruiserweight Division on Raw.
Others have been signed, but will spend time working at the Performance Centre, as well as working NXT TV and live shows. WWE has gained a lot of talent from the CWC, but It’s safe to say that the Cruiserweight Division on Raw, so far, hasn’t lived up to the same heights of the CWC. It’s only a few weeks old, but already WWE seems to be struggling to make the WWE Universe care about the Cruiserweight Division.
The biggest problem right now is that the WWE has given the fans little reason to get behind any one guy in the division. We have TJ Perkins as Cruiserweight Champion, but on the main roster, WWE hasn’t done a great deal to build him a character. Perkins won the title as part of winning the CWC tournament, and has defended it against Brian Kendrick on the Clash of Champions pay-per-view. But other than that not a great deal has been done to build the Perkins character.
Amongst the rest of the men that make up the division, we know little about any of them. WWE may very well be pushing the fact they now have the Cruiserweight Division, but you cannot just assume that the fans know everything about any of these guys. When you speak about the fans in the arena on Raw every week, you cannot assume that they have seen any of these men in the CWC or on the indy circuit.
The easiest way for WWE to get fans behind the Cruiserweight Division is to give them a reason to care about each of them. Right now, with the matches we’ve seen on Raw so far, it feels like WWE thinks the Cruiserweights are just interchangeable. Almost like Vince McMahon sits backstage and utters the line “Put that flippy guy out there with that other flippy guy” and expects that to be enough to get them over.
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With every other man or woman we see on Raw there has been some kind of back story built up, I’m not always saying that it’s a good back story, but there is something that we’ve been told about them.
We’ve been told about Perkins’ past, but so far we know nothing about who he’s meant to be as a champion. Kendrick is the heel of the division right now and we saw a great interview with him talking about his journey back to WWE, we need more of that and not just on WWE.com. Guys like Cedric Alexander and Rich Swann are phenomenal talents, but fans will only really buy into them if we find out some back story for them.
It’s great that the Cruiserweights have a massive platform on Raw. It’s great that some of the best talents in the world have been thrust into the limelight. But without building feuds, without giving us a reason to care about these men, it will ultimately fall flat and the fans will grow bored of just generic matches taking place every week.
On next weeks Raw it would be amazing to see some kind of plugging for a sit-down interview with one of the men in the division. Michael Cole has the weekly interview on WWE.com, that space should be held back for each man in the Cruiserweight Division to talk about what makes them special to the division.
Not just the fact that they can fly over the top rope or how one of them wear a mask and have trained in Mexico/Japan. We need to give every man a reason to be here. Every man needs a reason why they are desperate to get their hands on that Cruiserweight title held by TJ Perkins.
It’s not too late for WWE to get fans behind the Cruiserweight Division 100-percent. It will take a little more effort than just throwing some guys out to have a match every week, but it’s possible that the Cruiserweight Division can steal the show every time they walk through that curtain.
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