10 Wrestlers You Didn’t Realise Were Vitally Important To Their Promotions
6. Mike Tenay
There's a strange and almost combative legacy surrounding the WCW Cruiserweights.
Certain fans, perhaps naively, your writer certainly amongst them once upon a time, conflated their spectacular ability and exhaustive effort with true superstardom. This created resentment amongst the actual headline acts in the company, and incited a sort of philosophical war that was even absorbed into onscreen canon to unsuccessful meta effect as WCW headed towards its demise. As a rule, if a programme has to question why it wouldn't draw money, it probably won't draw money.
At its peak, the revolutionary division, and its exhilarating in-ring, was key to the holistic success WCW enjoyed for those 83 weeks. If nobody tuned in for the Cruiserweights, they certainly didn't - or couldn't - tune out when they were tearing the house down. And it was the studious, passionate and insightful Mike Tenay who deserves much credit for getting them over to unfamiliar audiences. It was a brand new wavelength, perhaps an alienating one, were it to have been called by a mystified or aloof commentary team. AEW's recent attempts to introduce decidedly non-traditional genres have repelled certain fans - even JR, before he came around.
Tenay in effective contrast explained and enriched everything, fervently, enabling a new range of styles to become accessible to and beloved by a new mainstream audience.