The Case for a WWE Light Heavyweight Division Part 2: The Belt and The Rest of the Roster

Could this be a marquee light heavy matchup?
Photo Credit: WWE.com

In my last article on this topic, I explained who I thought the ace of a rebuilt light heavyweight division should be. (Please read that won't you? It will make me a very happy panda.) But after I wrote that article, something dawned on me. I hadn't listed what the belt should look like, what the weight limit for it would be, or anything else of that type. This is something that needs to be remedied, and I will be the one to do it.

Firstly, the easiest thing to fix. The actual championship belt. The last time the WWE did this, before it screwed this up, this was the belt the company went with:

Now, what I would love to happen here is that the WWE, with its vast resources and huge coffers, makes a deal with the National Wrestling Alliance to get their World Title belt and use it for the new championship.

 It seems classic enough and fits with the idea of what I want to do. But understanding that, for a lot of reasons, that may not be able to happen, I think the best thing to do here is to just create your own title belt, with the idea that it should look classic, and not like something you made for one guy and one guy only to have (E.G. the Spinner title.)

Now that I know what the belt should look like, I actually want to move to building the rest of the division.

Firstly, this is the sort of thing that needs an agent, someone to block this entire idea from the capricious whims of Vince McMahon and his coterie of lieutenants. The best idea for what we need is for someone who knows what it is to have that belt, and have it mean more than just a joke for Vince McMahon to have fun with. Normally, I'd put Finlay here. But I think he's got enough going on with the Divas to keep him busy. So where do I go? If money was no object, I'd hire whoever it was who has booked the jr. heavyweights for New Japan because that's how light heavyweights should be booked. But since that can't happen for a variety of reasons, I decided to go with Dean Malenko. Not just because he was one of the most decorated light heavyweights of this era, although that helps with this. But I imagine he cares, or at least for the sake of this he should care.

Secondly, especially in the WWE of 2014, depth of the roster should be an issue. And there are enough guys here that fit the weight limit of 235 lbs. who are doing next to nothing on the "big club" as I understand it that you can really have some fun with this. For the sake of expediency, I'm just going to list this in faces and heels. You can figure out, on your own, the roles they should play in those strata. Also, yes I am using the official WWE weight measurements even if I don't necessarily believe them.

Faces:

• Adam Rose
• Zack Ryder
• Sin Cara
• R-Truth
• Kofi Kingston

Heels:

• Bo Dallas
• Tyson Kidd
• The Miz
• Justin Gabriel
• Christian
• Heath Slater

And that's before we even get to NXT, and guys like Sami Zayn, CJ Parker, and Enzo Amore who would provide us something different.

In the next, and hopefully last, part of this series I'll explan how I would build it if I suddenly had some sort of freaky-Friday mind meld with Dean Malenko.