Were the cruiserweights ever booked in a meaningful way on PPV? It often seemed as though WWE would just send the cruiserweights out to act as a 'bathroom break' match if there weren't any divas on the Smackdown brand that were capable of wrestling. The main issue was that fans were never given any reason to care about the cruiserweights. Scarcely were they given interview time or a full-on angle to work with. Instead, they were just instucted to go out to the ring, wrestle a decent match and then come back and hit the showers. Who can really get invested in that? Fans react more to characters and personality than they do to armdrags and planchas. Too many times the cruiserweights were set up to fail. Never was it more apparent than when WWE would lazily book a 'cruiserwight open' or gauntlet match. These multi-man matches were either very short, as in the case of the 'open' invitationals (everyone is in the ring at the same time) or they comprised several very short singles matches. This is particularly true of the 06/07 era, when Gregory Helms had his lengthy reign. Instead of giving him a meaningful programme, they would just send a bunch of guys out there and ask them to fill between 6-10 minutes of airtime.
