The dearly beloved WWE Cruiserweight Classic is now officially behind us with Wednesday’s airing of the well-received finale. A new Cruiserweight Champion has been crowned and now a 10-spot of competitors will be moving up to Raw. One of the people who will not be moving on (for the time being) is stalwart pro wres veteran Tyson Dux, who turned a lot of heads with his first-round loss to one of the favorites at the beginning of the tournament, Zack Sabre, Jr.
Dux recently appeared on episode 276 of the Shining Wizards Wrestling Podcast and discussed working with the WWE agents, including having to deal with last-minute booking changes and having to work around some limitations that were put on the CWC wrestlers and their movesets.
“We had agents. We had to deal with agents as well and plan it out. I know for me personally, I wanted to do a stalling suplex from the second rope and they completely scrapped that. They said no way can you do that. For whatever reason, Me and Zach were supposed to be 50/50 right up to the end and it was more of a showcase for Zach which is understandable, right? I get it. There weren’t major handcuffs put on, but they did want to steer the ship the way they want to steer it. So as we go along and get more progressive into it, they’re easing up on it. Tozawa is known for that snap German suplex with a hold for the pin and they were adamant on saying no absolutely no head drops at all and when push came to shove, Tozawa did put (Ken) Johnson directly on his bean for that snap German suplex. It’s the same as anything. It’s wrestling politics. Either you kind of bite the bullet and ask for forgiveness later or you just do your stuff. I’m sure to God that burning hammer (Brian Kendrick’s) was not discussed. WWE doesn’t even let the tombstone fly other than The Undertaker.”
I’m sure that pretty much every reasonable pro wrestling fan in the world can get behind “no head drops,” but nixing a stalling suplex seems a bit odd. Speaking personally, given how impressed I was by Dux in his lone match in the CWC, I can only imagine how blown away I would be if he had been given that 50/50 match with Sabre. Here’s to what could have been and here’s to me continuing to hold out hope that Dux will be one of the people WWE calls if they decide to have a Smackdown cruiserweight division as well.
(Transcript via Wrestling Inc.)
