Matt Hardy held the WWE Cruiserweight Championship in the early 2000s. At WrestleMania 19 in 2003, he defeated Rey Mysterio to retain that Title.
While the Cruiserweight Title matches were always interesting from an in-ring standpoint, Vince McMahon never promoted the Cruiserweight Champion as a top attraction.
On his podcast, Matt Hardy had the following to say about Vince’s beliefs:
“It’s Vince-ism. He thinks what draws is having a big larger than life superstar that is either your World Champion or trying to be the World Champion.
Then when they walk through an airport that people recognize, ‘Oh, my God, this guy’s a star’, and in Vince’s mind, like small people who don’t stand out quite as much, aren’t as big of a deal.
And I think that kind of the stigma from Vince is why the Cruiserweight Championship never got a ton of promotion, in many ways.
He’s just like, ‘okay, sure, these guys can go out and they can have these great matches, but nobody sees them as like, you know, household name, a larger than life star, they’re gonna recognise in an airport’.
You know, that’s once again another one of Vince’s big attractions were big, tall, muscular, jacked up dudes, you know, he loved that because they’re gonna stand out at an airport.”
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