Is Buddy Murphy Right About 205 Live Being WWE’s Best Brand?

At WWE Super Show-Down, Buddy Murphy became the new face of 205 Live by defeating Cedric Alexander for the Cruiserweight Championship. Recently Murphy stated his understandable belief that 205 is the promotion’s best brand right now, and his statement is a reminder that WWE is absolutely loaded with great content in 2018.

Cedric Alexander carried the Cruiserweight Championship with the prestige that it deserves, putting on tremendous matches with wrestlers like Mustafa Ali, Drew Gulak, and Buddy Murphy on some of WWE’s biggest shows this year. Thanks to Alexander’s work as champion, 205 Live is in a great spot with Murphy leading the way, and 205 could reach new heights after Murphy secured the title at WWE Super Show-Down.

Murphy’s outstanding ability inside the squared circle isn’t in any doubt. This year, he joined the 205 Live roster and immediately became a standout, wowing audiences with stellar performances against the likes of Ariya Daivari, Alexander, Kalisto, and Ali.

Now that Murphy is Cruiserweight Champion, he’s ready to keep building this show brick-by-brick, as Ali likes to put it, perhaps even increasing the show’s level of quality.

Murphy is already off to a great start when it comes to promoting 205 as its champion, because he told FOX Sports Australia that he believes 205 Live is currently WWE’s best brand. [H/T to WrestlingInc.com’s Marc Middleton]

"“This is what we do. Not just me, all of 205 Live. We are the best brand in the WWE and I think tonight we proved that. We had 70,000 people out there who now know that.”"

I would expect Murphy to pound the table for his show and declare it as the best in WWE, because any competitive athlete should feel that way about their “team”. For WWE’s Cruiserweights, 205 is their “team”, and even though everyone wrestlers for the same company, there’s friendly competition among the brands (even if there’s no 205 vs. NXT Survivor Series match).

There’s stiff competition for the title of “best brand” in WWE today, because every show brings something uniquely great to the table. Today’s WWE roster is beyond stacked, and it’s about to get even more loaded when Rey Mysterio makes his return to SmackDown 1000 next week. Not only can this company sign the best of the best from elsewhere, such as Io Shirai and Deonna Purrazzo this year, but they have plenty of past legends they can call up like Mysterio and Batista.

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That said, while the main roster brands bring the firepower, they sometimes lack consistency. Raw is coming off of one of its best episodes this year, but that came after two lackluster weeks that disappointed many fans.

SmackDown Live has been on fire since the summer, though, and with wrestlers like Andrade “Cien” Almas and Becky Lynch, it’s hard to pick against them in a debate surrounding the best brand in WWE.

NXT is widely recognized as the best weekly wrestling show. It’s consistent, the storylines are easy to follow, and the TakeOver Specials are always among the best shows of the year. Even NJPW’s biggest shows get outshined by NXT TakeOvers, and that’s been especially true this year due to talents like Almas, Johnny Gargano, Ricochet, Tommaso Ciampa, Shayna Baszler, The Velveteen Dream, and Kairi Sane.

Even though 205 Live and NXT are completely different shows, the similarities between them makes them easier to compare than, say, 205 and SmackDown. Both shows are one hour long, they are run by Triple H, they are exclusive to the WWE Network, and they put the focus on wrestling with vignettes to support character development. There are no drawn-out promos, no power-hungry authority figures, and few wasted motions.

In terms of pure excitement, though, it’s hard to top 205. The tornado tag matches we’ve seen this year are unique to anything else in wrestling. The likes of Gran Metalik have blown our minds with their feats of athleticism, and WWE’s “Purple Brand” isn’t short on talkers either. Lio Rush, for example, is so irritating and self-aggrandizing that he earned a bigger opportunity on the main roster as Bobby Lashley’s heel mouthpiece.

Whether it’s Murphy vs. Ali in a No Disqualification match, Noam Dar taking the piss out of TJP, Rush “coming to collect”, or Alexander putting it all on the line against an insidious Gulak, 205 offers a wide palate of entertainment for wrestling fans.

205 Live is as diverse as it gets for a wrestling show that can only have men under 205 pounds competing in it.

When Vic Joseph screams about how 205 is the “most exciting hour on television”, he’s repeating a tag-line, but it’s something that the show has finally lived up to this year. Long gone are the idiotic segments where Cedric Alexander dresses up as a clown or somebody tries to force-feed candy to Tony Nese. Now, these wrestlers are serious competitors whose characters revolve around their wrestling ability and intrinsic motivation, as opposed to their desire to smash someone’s face into a birthday cake.

It’s hard to define a “best” brand in WWE, but 205 is the most unique and fast-paced brand in wrestling. If I were to tally up all of the best weekly television matches I’ve seen this year, 205 would probably be represented better than any other wrestling show. And I’m not just talking about WWE.

I can’t wait to see how Buddy Murphy keeps this momentum going for 205, because there are several compelling feuds for him to undertake as the new Cruiserweight Champion. Though 205 isn’t the “perfect” wrestling show, it has achieved its goal as an electrifying and entertaining-but-no-nonsense brand on Cruiserweight wrestling after previously toiling in mediocrity.