WWE debuted its newest concept show, "205 Live," on the WWE Network following "Smackdown" on Tuesday. After the success of the Cruiserweight Classic, the decision was made to replace the failing "WWE Superstars" show with one focusing exclusively on the cruiserweights. Given that the division has been met with indifference to date on "Raw" and treated like filler, this can only be a step up for it. The main problem to date has been that these guys are all doing stuff that the bigger guys are already doing, so there's no sense of differentiation in the styles or the personalities.
The presentation was nice, with all of the participants in the division being introduced to the crowd at the start of the show, and a series of video packages for the bigger names on the show, very reminiscent of the original version of "Main Event" on ION when it launched a few years back. Of course, they quickly started ignoring that show after a good start.
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A recap of the night's action:
The Bollywood Boys defeated Tony Nese and Drew Gulak in a decent opener.
Nothing much to this one, with the high-flying Serha brothers (from India by way of Canada) beating the other team with a double superkick. The crowd was pretty much dead silent the whole time; none of these guys are presented as "real" stars and there were few high-flying moves.
Jack Gallagher beat Arya Daivari with a running knee in the corner.
Gallagher almost managed to get himself over with the crowd by sheer force of willpower, with inventive spots like the pretzel hold (where the opponent is tied up with his own arms), as well as his gentlemanly charisma and amazing mustache. I was a big fan of Gallagher's work on the CWC and I'm glad he's getting another shot here, but once again there wasn't much to this one, just going a few minutes with a brief comeback by generic heel Daivari before Gallagher put him away with the running knee. Another one where it was fine, but nothing that would win over new fans or anything. Gallagher himself looks to be a big star if he continues getting exposure on the main roster, however.
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Rich Swann won the WWE cruiserweight title from Brian Kendrick in the main event.
This was the match to really sell the concept of the show. Swann upset Kendrick in a really good match, which was finally given time (about 15 minutes) and an appreciative crowd to get it over. The story was that Kendrick gave Swann a neckbreaker on the apron to injure him early, and kept trying to go for his rear chokehold to capitalize, while Swann was more concerned with flashy moves. Finally, however, after trading big moves (including Kendrick pulling out a top-rope version of his Sliced Bread finisher), Swann got fired up and finished him off with three spinning back kicks to the head. Probably the best match of the week thus far in WWE, and one that made the show well worth watching.
Hopefully they can keep building on this, because it was a solid debut and a good first effort.
