10 Times WWE Totally BOTCHED A New Title
5. WWE/NXT Cruiserweight Championship
When fans learned that WWE was resurrecting the Cruiserweight
Championship, surely, they thought, the company would avoid the pitfalls that
befell the title before, when a little person was the last man to hold the strap?
And then… purple happened.
The 2016 Cruiserweight Classic was a highly regarded, critically acclaimed event that gave immediate credibility to the newly resurrected (though not linear) Cruiserweight title. But once the tournament ended, some of the major names who participated went back to the independent circuit, while WWE signed several of the other wrestlers.
The title initially would be defended on Raw in a strange, parallel universe where the ropes, turnbuckle pads and lighting were purple and no one interacted with anyone else from Raw. With no connection to WWE proper, no major storylines and little context to fans who missed the WWE Network tournament, matches were not really well-received in the arenas.
Later that fall, the cruiserweights got their own show, 205 Live, on the WWE Network, which reduced the visibility of the title even further. It was mostly relegated to that program before being shunted off to NXT, where it ultimately would be retired in 2022, less than six years after it debuted.
But really, the title was destined for second-class citizenship almost immediately.