Daniel Bryan Knows Why No One Cares About WWE’s 205 Live

One of WWE‘s newest experiments has been the inclusion of their Crusierweight Division, 205 Live. For most fans, it provides the perfect time to use the bathroom during a WWE show.

Outside of Crusierweight Champion, Neville, the high-flyers have had a tough time garnering a reaction from audiences. How have things gone so poorly? Well, Daniel Bryan may have the answer.

The SmackDown GM recently joined former WWE Superstars Edge and Christian on their podcast, E&C’s Pod of Awesomeness. When the subject of WWE’s cruiserweight was broach, Bryan had a very thoughtful take:

“I think one of the things that they have a hard time with with 205 Live and the cruiserweights, is they do some incredible stuff, but do you know who else is doing incredible stuff? AJ Styles doing springboard 450º splashes, right? So to somebody who really knows, okay, the degree of difficulty, they may see Mustafa Ali do this incredible, I don’t even know what you call it, an inverted 450º splash or something, I don’t know, [but] it’s incredible. But to the casual fan, is that any more impressive than AJ Styles doing a springboard 450º splash? And he’s a main event guy who gets promo time and all this kind of stuff.”

It’s hard to argue Bryan’s logic here. 205 Live looks like a watered down impression of AJ Styles, Seth Rollins and even Finn Balor. For most fans it’s hard to distinguish one cruiserweight form the other. As they all are nearly identical in size, they only have personas, not characters. There are no promos, there are no rivalries, just people wrestling.

Even further, WWE has assigned 205 Live it’s own set – specifically changing the ring ropes from red to purple. For most, this signifies the moment they should change the channel. For the Crusierweights th attempt to provide a purple novelty, has only ensnared them, tying them to the train tracks of irrelevance.

Barring a change in philosophy, 205 will soon be gone. There’s some salvageable parts, though – Akira Tozawa has been great and Jack Gallagher is certainly a memorable character. But other than that, 205 consists of physically gifted, undersized wrestlers who have little personality. That kind of chemical make-up has never worked in WWE and it doesn’t look like it will be changing.

[H/T to WrestlingINC for the transcription]