WWE's Road Dogg On Why 205 Live Was Not More Successful

"WWE's 205 Live" was a cruiserweight-based show that came off the back of the Cruiserweight Classic tournament in 2016. However, it never truly took off despite the talented roster WWE brought together, and Brian "Road Dogg" James admitted it's hard to put his finger on why it never found a larger audience.

"There's so many people out there that are great that are under 200 pounds. Look at both rosters right now, [they] are just chocka block full of them," he said on "Oh You Didn't Know." "So, I think it was an opportunity to get that kind of talent, the smaller than the normal WWE talent on WWE programming, and get them under contract." 

James doesn't think that the show was a failure but pointed out that it was exclusively on the WWE Network, which meant fans had to go out of their way to search for it. It's something that they tried to fix at times, and while WWE did end up implementing the cruiserweights onto "WWE Raw" at points, that didn't make the long-term impact the show needed for success. 

"We talked about all this. Do we make the third hour of Raw 205 Live? There's a million conversations, and call it WWE Turbo or something," he questioned. "I don't know what we were out to get; it was almost a hidden little gem. You had to really go in there and find 205 to watch. I think if you go back on there right now and watch it on the archives, there is great, and I mean great, wrestling matches on there."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Oh You Didn't Know" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.