10 Important Innovations WCW Made To The Wrestling Industry

6. Showcasing Cruiserweight Wrestling

When fans reflect on the best of WCW they often think about the Cruiserweight division that "stole the show" many times from the mid to late 1990s. Thanks to a roster of ridiculously talented performers like Rey Mysterio, Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Chris Jericho, Juventud Guerrera, Psychosis, Shane Helms and so on, they had some of best matches in the company. We saw all kinds of great cruiserweight feuds and matches with Mysterio booked as the main babyface in the division. The things that Rey did in 1996 when he was just 21 were unheard of before we saw him do it. Whether it was the top rope somersault attacks over the top rope or doing hurricanrana counters off Powerbomb attempts on the top rope, Mysterio was a game changer. So was the entire cruiserweight division. The talent of those wresters is what stood out more than anything. A lot of the time the storylines sucked or they weren't given much for stories, but they usually got time to have great matches in the ring and that's why we remember this period so fondly. Give WCW and Eric Bischoff a lot of credit for realizing that fans wanted to see these incredible athletes performing on TV & PPV doing matches we hadn't seen before. It worked.