6 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 9)

4. Cruiserweights Are An Afterthought

cruiserweights WWE
WWE.com

Even with the WWE Cruiserweight Championship being defended in the main event of Raw, it’s hard to ignore the earlier cruiserweight tag match.

Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali battled Brian Kendrick and Jack Gallagher in an ultra-brief match that was sloppy, disjointed and completely forgettable.

You might argue that the match was just window dressing before the main event, but it’s just a continuation of what we see week after week: the cruiserweights are limited, compressed and almost neutered. They don’t fly around the ring like we know they’re capable, they don’t get time to shine, and they exist in a strange bubble where their presence on Raw is all-but ignored by the rest of the roster.

The title match being in the main event blunts this criticism a decent amount, but that bout was between two guys formerly on the main roster, including a former United States Champion in Kalisto. It isn’t like it was a match between Akira Tozawa and TJP.

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.