Rich Swann Wins WWE Cruiserweight Championship on 205 Live (Video)

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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To close out the debut episode of WWE 205 Live, Rich Swann beat Brian Kendrick to become the new Cruiserweight champion.

Brian Kendrick defending the WWE Cruiserweight Championship against Rich Swann had been pre-advertised for a few weeks before the debut of 205 Live. Swann beat TJ Perkins and Noam Dar to earn this opportunity. This match ended up headlining the show on Tuesday night, and man, was it a great one.

205 Live opened quietly with a tag match and somewhat woke up after Jack Gallagher made his main roster debut. However, the work that Kendrick and Swann put on in the main event seemed to turn things around. “This is awesome” chants seemed to wake everyone up as they were into the in-ring action and popped for the second half of the match. It was much-needed and somewhat surprising since fans had already gone through two hours of SmackDown.

Well, in the aftermath of the match, Swann would beat Kendrick to become the third and new Cruiserweight champion. He received “you deserve it” chants and a huge applause from the Columbia, SC crowd.

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What a way to kick off 205 Live. A title change arguably had been needed to get the show hot and have the fans talking. Both of those things can be checked off, which should get more fans tuning into the program next Tuesday.

For Swann, it’s an incredible moment and culmination of years of hard work. He’s now getting the keys to the cruiserweight division on Monday and Tuesday nights, which is a heavy task. Based on what he’s done these past few months, though, this may not be so difficult. His smooth charisma and in-ring style has won over fans just about everywhere he’s gone, making him into the star that WWE had wanted Perkins to be.

We are in for the reign of Rich Swann in the cruiserweight division. Thoughts?

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