8 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 31)
5. Cruiserweight Redux
In the Hell in a Cell column, the cruiserweight six-man tag match received a cautious “up” for being entertaining, but with a warning that continuing “to run six-man cruiserweight tag matches that appear to just be random bouts with no rhyme or reason… will become a negative for the division.”
Cue Raw, and we had a six-man tag match that involved five of Sunday night’s participants, with Rich Swann subbing for Sin Cara. That was strange enough. But then you had chinlocks and other restholds in a six-man cruiserweight bout, and Michael Cole proclaiming that stereo dives to the floor from Cedric Alexander and Lince Dorado are what the cruiserweight division is all about.
This isn’t an attempt to write off the division, but it’s clear WWE is missing why the Cruiserweight Classic was so popular among fans. There, wrestlers had time to develop their singles matches, and they pulled out moves and sequences we never see in WWE. But then on Raw, the cruiserweights are being forced to “work WWE style,” which severely limits their movesets, and then they’re stuck in short multi-man matches where no one really can stand out for more than a minute.
It feels like the entire division is being set up for failure, as you’re left with smaller superstars wrestling WWE style (albeit faster-paced) in five-minute matches. That doesn’t bode well. Let’s hope things steamroll forward.