9 Times WWE Disrespected The Cruiserweights

The cruiserweight division was one of the highlights of WCW in the 1990s. When the nWo and the 'surprise' appearances by former WWE stars became tiresome, you could still rely on the fast-moving, high-flying cruiserweights for entertainment. For years, the likes of Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Juventud Guerrera, Billy Kidman and a host of others were presenting cutting edge professional wrestling night in and night out. It was the most exciting wrestling on prime time television and they often stole the show on PPV, too. The WWE tried to compete, but their Lightheavyweight division, such as it was, had no chance of competing. The WCW guys were just in a different class altogether. When WWE acquired WCW in March 2001, however, they got the Cruiserweight Tite as part of the package and went about trying to revive the division. With no history of being able to properly promote smaller wrestlers, WWE struggled to figure out what to do with the cruiserweights. Most of the time, they were an afterthought, used as time-fillers or squashed by the bigger men. A lot of the time, however, WWE showed out-and-out disrespect towards its underutilized cruisers.