The Cruiserweight Classic wasn’t just WWE’s way of introducing a bunch of new faces. According to Drew Gulak, Triple H already had a much bigger plan in mind, and it would’ve made the cruiserweight division feel completely different from everything else on WWE television.
Speaking on the Certified Mark Show, Gulak explained that he never heard WWE trying to force everyone in the Cruiserweight Classic into one specific wrestling style. If anything, he said the entire point of the tournament was to show just how different everyone was from one another. He also revealed that Triple H saw the tournament as a testing ground for a brand-new concept on the WWE Network.
“If anything, I think they wanted to showcase as much of the versatility that we all brought to the table as we could.”
“I think Triple H was really looking for alternative content that they could shoot for the WWE Network and that was kind of the testing ground, was that tournament.”
Gulak said WWE already had bigger plans by the time the tournament was underway. Even before the company had settled on the name, there was talk about spinning the Cruiserweight Classic into its own weekly show. More importantly, he said Triple H already knew exactly what he wanted that show to become.
“We were live broadcast on the WWE Network. Bunch of wrestlers you never heard of before, which was huge. And then they had plans to maybe turn it into a 205 Live or a Cruiserweight show, whatever they were going to call it at the time.”
“They didn’t pick a name until like that week. And Hunter had a very clear vision of, like, the cruiserweight division changing the way the whole show looks and it becoming a sport.”
Rather than trying to copy the rest of WWE’s presentation, Gulak said Triple H wanted cruiserweight wrestling to stand out the second it came on screen. The goal wasn’t to replace Vince McMahon’s vision of wrestling—it was to give fans something that felt completely different whenever the cruiserweights took over.
“He wanted it to contrast Vince’s thing, not to take away from it, just to create a different dynamic for the audience to engage in.”
That vision went well beyond the wrestling itself. Gulak said cruiserweight matches were supposed to have their own unique identity, from the arena lighting to how matches started and even how wins were tracked.
“He wanted it to be where cruiserweight matches on Raw, where the whole venue would turn purple. We have to shake hands before the match and you knew it was going to be points-based essentially and, like, wins and rankings all mattered.”
“So it was congruent with a lot of what Evolve was trying to be at the time. It incorporated a little bit of that old British style where there were rounds from the Lord Mount Evans rule set.”
According to Gulak, though, those ideas never really got the chance to develop. He believes the entire direction of the cruiserweight division changed almost immediately after Vince McMahon took control of the project, leaving fans with something very different from what Triple H had originally envisioned.
“It was a very stark contrasting vision to what it wound up becoming when Vince took the show over on our first day.”
Looking back, Gulak still believes the Cruiserweight Classic accomplished exactly what it set out to do by highlighting the variety of talent on display. But hearing what Triple H originally had planned makes it hard not to wonder how different the cruiserweight division might have been if that vision had stayed in place instead of changing almost as soon as the tournament ended.
Do you think Triple H’s original concept would’ve made the cruiserweight division a bigger success, or do you prefer the direction WWE ultimately went? Let us know in the comments below.
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