I’m still amazed that we’re living in a world where WWE is producing a global Cruiserweight division tournament where a bunch of great wrestlers fight for a trophy. It feels like something old AWA fans would wax and wane about when telling us youngsters about the good ol’ days.
And yet, here we are! Daniel Bryan and Mauro Ranallo broke things down on the Network, and revealed the complete brackets for the tournament:
There’s so much to take in on these brackets. We’ve got a ton of wildcards that most wrestling fans don’t know much about, like relative unknown Sean Maluta, taking on a runaway fan favorite in Kota Ibushi. Rising NXT tag team Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa will be facing each other in their opening round, which busts future storylines wide open for both of them. This could easily be Rich Swann’s moment. Ring Ka King stand outs The Bollywood Boys are my personal favorites to win. Both of them, together. The possibilities for this tournament are endless.
This is wrestling at its best for me: the stories are going to be built in the ring. No bells, no whistles, just fantastic performers leaving it all in the ring with two fantastic story tellers calling the show in Ranallo and Bryan. The simple approach of meeting these guys and learning why they’re fighting has me more invested in the entire bracket than any number of twenty-minute Raw promos.
Personally, I haven’t been this excited about wrestling in ages, and I honestly don’t know where to begin with analysis of this special. Daniel Bryan introduced a closer look at Zack Sabre Jr on the WWE Network and I’m pretty sure I’m in the Matrix.
The Cruiserweight Classic begins on the WWE Network on July 14th.
