How to Build A Light Heavyweight Division In The WWF Part 1: The Roster

This Could Be A Big Deal.
Photo Credit: Stock Image

There was a time, maybe in the heyday of WCW, where the Light Heavyweight or Cruiserweight Title was a supremely important belt. Through a combination of WCW's gigantic talent budget, and their affiliations with New Japan and AAA, the end result was that the championship seemed like a huge deal even with what was WCW's dismissiveness towards it. But with the demise of WCW, and the confusion about who could step into the breach,  one thing died.  And that was the relevancy of the Light Heavyweight Title. Sure, WWE paid lip service to the idea for a little while but since, at its core, WWE is run as a "big man's territory" it was only too long before the cruiserweight champion became a joke.

But I want to fix it. I want to make it work again. Sure, this is probably a 1-man crusade. But it's my crusade. Want to join me?

Flyin' Brian: A Gushing Appreciation

Flyin' Brian: My Favorite Junior Heavyweight Ever.

If, by some minor fluke, you listened to this you may have discovered that I sincerely love 1992-era WCW. And above all else, there was one reason I enjoyed that era of WCW (shortly before Bill Watts came in and it all went to hell in a handbasket). It was Flyin' Brian. And believe me when i tell you, because this is the absolute truth, we are never going to see his like again. No matter how hard you may want it, no matter how good it may be for wrestling as a whole, the cold hard fact is that it will never happen.

Free Wrestling On The Internet: The Midnight Express

The best part about the internet, besides reading this fine blog, is the sheer preponderance of awesome wrestling from a variety of sources that you can find. All you need to know how to do, really, is look for what YOU like. I'm not asking you to enjoy what I enjoy, but that you enjoy something. 

What do I enjoy? The Midnight Express for one. Watching them do what they did was awesome. Admittedly, the Eaton-Condrey variant doesn't have nearly as much tape available. But from what you hear from people who were around during that time period, they were as good as it got. But the Eaton-Lane version? That's the fun stuff. 

Below are links to matches against the Fantastics, and the Rock N' Roll Express. You can find more. I recommend you do just that. 

The Dream Match To End All Dream Matches, Or Discussion Of Them

KANA. 1\2 of the greatest dream match ever.

(Full disclosure: I root passionately, unabashedly, and shamelessly for both KANA and her opponent in this match. I don't think that will change the way I write this match, but I needed to clear that up before I kept going in this piece.)

One of the beautiful things about this blog is that I get the chance to spitball ideas for this blog of mine on Twitter. For some reason, my mind and my heart has been drawing me to discuss dream matches. For whatever reason, they've always captivated me. The idea that 2 wrestlers who are clearly stars coming together to figure out which one of the 2 is the better has always interested me. And when I think about what dream matches are left, there's really one left. And it's so beautiful that I had to talk about it, write about it, and hopefully do my small part to make it happen.

It's not Working: Jim Cornette & ROH

I know a lot of people who would argue vociferously that somehow everything from the current era of wrestling is superior than what came before. But that isn't true all the time. Yes, in terms of innovative offense, 2012 has it all over 1988. But are the workers better, smarter, more capable now than then? Depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer.

Jim Cornette is one of those people. He has argued, in the multitude of shoots that he's done, that wrestlers today are less qualified, less skilled, than their peers from eras past. Combine this with his admitted obsession with making pro wrestling more like MMA, and you have a very strange booking philosophy. How do you fix it? And what are the problems?

A Welcome, and something new on the agenda

Firstly, before I write the rest of this, a big thanks to Thomas Holzerman, Brandon Stroud, and Dirty Dirty Sheets for being nice enough to RT the Team Texas article I posted earlier today. I really do appreciate it, because for a long while, this blog lay dormant and fallow. I didn't post enough, and that's my fault. But that ends. There's enough cool wrestling, both past and present to get lots of cool topics out of. Which actually is the subject of my article today.

A Trio Whose Time Has Come: Team Texas

With Chikara Pro's King of Trios upcoming, we've already seen a whole bunch of trios announced. Traditional Chikara trios like The Batiri, The Spectral Envoy, FIST, and the Throwbacks. Add to this the outside trios of The Extreme Trio (2 Cold Scorpio, Jerry Lynn, and Tommy Dreamer), Team JWP (Commando Bolshoi, Tsubasa Kuragaki, and Kaori Yoneyama), and Team ROH (The Young Bucks and Mike Bennett) and it seems like the King of Trios tournament is on the verge of being absolutely awesome. But there is a trio that hasn't been announced yet. Frankly, I am not sure it ever will be. Which is a shame. Because if they put this trio together, Millions of Buys. The trio I'm talking about? Team Texas.