WWE needs to do better by their 205 Live guys

WWE’s reticence to give the majority of 205 Live graduates any semblance of a push reflects poorly on the company’s cruiserweight show.

In WWE and pro wrestling in general, as is the case in other fictional works, presentation means everything. The way a promoter or a booker presents a wrestler, championship, or match within the confines of their canonical universe can be the difference between the fans buying into the storylines they’re given or ignoring those narratives altogether.

Take Kofi Kingston and Rey Mysterio’s maiden World Championship runs, for instance. Both men received the “unexpected underdog champion” designation following their respective championship wins at WrestleMania; Kingston winning the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 35 last April, Mysterio at 22 in 2006.

That’s where the comparisons end. While WWE has rectified Kingston’s credibility as a legitimate WWE Champion with definitive victories in good matches – though a couple of those wins came against perpetual choker Dolph Ziggler – Mysterio’s first go-round with the World Heavyweight Championship was plagued by clean loss after clean loss to guys who weren’t main event mainstays.

Not-so-coincidentally, most fans currently view Kingston’s reign as a success while Mysterio is considered one of the weakest world champions in history. It’s amazing how something as basic as a win-loss record can make two reigns that are similar in many ways come across so differently. The presentation mattered.

Among many other facets, WWE has struggled with presenting former 205 Live wrestlers as main roster stars. Aside from Mustafa Ali, company CEO and de facto head booker Vince McMahon has treated the Cruiserweight transfers from the Tuesday night WWE Network program like a kid treats a Christmas present they didn’t want; he uses them because he feels like he has to but ultimately spends more time focusing on other wrestlers and feuds.

Last spring’s Superstar Shake-up sent the previous two Cruiserweight Champions, Buddy Murphy and Cedric Alexander, to SmackDown Live and RAW, respectively, and what has WWE done with those well-regarded former titleholders?

Well, Alexander, whose reign helped pull 205 Live out from its lowest point, received a pre-debut hype video before losing his first match to Cesaro — you know, the guy that McMahon definitely sees as a top guy — and aside from his fluke win over Drew McIntyre on the July 15 RAW, has spent most of his Monday nights chasing after the 24/7 Championship with the other undercard talent.

At least Alexander makes it on the TV show he’s assigned to. Murphy, whose 183-day dominion over the division cemented him as the Shawn Michaels to Wesley Blake’s Marty Jannetty, has physically appeared on SmackDown once since cutting a brief promo on the April 16 episode — unless you count those segments that WWE films during commercial breaks.

His name wasn’t even mentioned on the show in the three months between those appearances until Kevin Owens listed him among the many underutilized talents in a worked shoot promo on the July 9 edition of SmackDown. Look, I know that Murphy’s nickname is “WWE’s Best Kept Secret”, but it shouldn’t be to the point where the guy never participates in any televised matches.

And that’s without mentioning Mike Kanellis, who right now is in a storyline with his wife Maria Kanellis that feels as though it was pulled from the “Terrible Attitude Era Storylines” bin. McMahon has presented these three as afterthoughts and in a company so bereft of top stars that they had to enact a “Wild Card” rule to paper over the holes in their roster, that’s the wrong approach.

Sure, you could pick away at all the reasons why each of them shouldn’t get elevated up the card, but those points become moot when you consider that this is the same company that once put the WWE Title on Jinder Mahal and put Baron Corbin in three straight pay-per-view (PPV) main events. If McMahon can ignore those guys’ glaring flaws and push them, surely he can do the same for the 205 Live imports.

Doing otherwise would not only continue to ignore the lack of star power on both shows, but it also does a disservice to 205 Live. Despite the show’s improvement under Triple H’s stewardship, the program still has trouble generating gaining any sort of momentum from a viewership standpoint and the crowds still react to most of the matches with indifference.

Much like their general disregard for Alexander, Kanellis, and Murphy, WWE has shown little interest in presenting 205 Live as a show worth investing an hour of your time on; they rarely mention the program on RAW or SmackDown and run almost no commercials for it. Even NXT gets an ad or two during RAW.

Giving the show the Main Event/Superstars/Velocity/Sunday Night Heat treatment renders it meaningless but presenting the previous two Cruiserweight Champions and a worker with a lot to offer in Kanellis as lower midcard goobers unworthy of substantial TV time is a more damaging indictment.

This isn’t as much of a problem with Kanellis, who was more or less a jobber-to-the-stars before his stay in the Cruiserweight ranks, but if fans see the two best wrestlers from 205 Live pursuing a meaningless title (albeit one that has produced some entertaining segments), regularly doing jobs, or sitting around backstage, it sends the message that the wrestlers who didn’t reach those heights are bigger losers than them. Who’s gonna tune into a show filled with losers?

This isn’t to suggest that every wrestler who moves from 205 Live to one of the main roster shows should receive a mega push. With a roster as deep as WWE’s, arguably their most talent-rich roster ever, everyone isn’t going to reach the main event picture.

But WWE can do more with their current crop of former 205 Live wrestlers than they have thus far. It could be as simple as putting one of them in a feud for a secondary title or giving them a few enhancement wins on TV while the company figures out what to do in the interim. Anything would be better than what they’ve gotten so far.

Simply put, WWE needs the change the way they present Alexander, Kanellis, Murphy and any other Cruiserweights who join RAW or SmackDown in the future. It could make a world of difference for those wrestlers and the show they came over from.