Why did the lighter weights die off in America?

[David Mantell]

5 minutes ago, El-P said:

It's crazy how people who where considered "small" in WWE in the 90's weren't small at all. Even the Hardy Boys. Look at them next to the MCMG, the Rascalz or the Young Bucks. They are much bigger.

Or compare the entire range of different sizes Davey Boy Smith went through 1978-1992.

[David Mantell]

16 minutes ago, G. Badger said:

 

I think the comment about post War nutrition and everything else everyone said is true as well 🙂

It was already happening in the late Thirties with the migration southwards to Mexico of the lighter weight NWA titles. 

1920s Champions like Sammy Stein and Benny Sherman suddenly found themselves with no new generation to succeed them, at least not in their home territory.

[David Mantell]

And to get to the nub of the question, how exactly did these titles get transplanted South of the border?

[JRH]

I'd actually think that the cruiserweights, at least the more high-flying ones, would actually be MORE appealing to American fans for doing something new. When I first saw clips of Jushin Liger in 1991 I was blown away. Of course, now that pretty much every company has a good number of high flyers, it may have suffered from too much of the same thing.

[G. Badger]

2 hours ago, David Mantell said:

It was already happening in the late Thirties with the migration southwards to Mexico of the lighter weight NWA titles. 

1920s Champions like Sammy Stein and Benny Sherman suddenly found themselves with no new generation to succeed them, at least not in their home territory.

My comment isn't necessarily about anything having to do with your question about why these belts went to Mexico but more to do with why lighter/smaller wrestlers & wrestling styles died out in the U.S.

But generally, the answer to why these belts went elsewhere is promoters no longer saw the value of weight classes and the titles. I think promoters realized American audiences weren't interested in that when watching wrestling. The introduction of the "Slam-bang Western style" is probably the genesis of that as well as the start of football players in American wrestling. If we're thinking of the same guy, Sammy Stein was in the NFL for instance.

 Anyhow, when the smaller, technical wrestlers weren't as interesting and they stopped making money in the States, the belts got loaned out to business partners to make money elsewhere like Mexico or other places where wrestling was still perceived as athletic competition and size wasn't as important as speed & technique. 

[David Mantell]

2 minutes ago, G. Badger said:

Anyhow, when the smaller, technical wrestlers weren't as interesting and they stopped making money in the States, the belts got loaned out to business partners to make money elsewhere like Mexico or other places where wrestling was still perceived as athletic competition and size wasn't as important as speed & technique.

Pretty good summary, cheers.

 

3 minutes ago, G. Badger said:

The introduction of the "Slam-bang Western style" is probably the genesis of that as well as the start importance of football players in American wrestling

In Britain, Slam Bang was probably the element that proved too much and got All In a ban by the LCC and others.

Quite a lot of British wrestlers have pasts in Rugby - before the shoulder pads and crash helmets were introduced, Rugby Football and Harvard Rules Football were superficially similar looking sports. It is the other sport for which Wigan was famous.

[NintendoLogic]

20 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Lighter-weight wrestlers are "normal". No-one's paying for normal in the exaggerated world of pro-wrestling.

In what universe are spectacular acrobats in colorful costumes "normal?"

Anyway, lighter wrestlers have had plenty of success in America in the past. Argentina Rocca was the one who brought New York back from the dead as a wrestling town. Verne Gagne's first major push was as NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion. Danny Hodge was already mentioned. If I were to identify a single cause for their decline in the US, I would point to the spread of steroids and the rise of Superstar Billy Graham in particular. The impact of his size and physique combined with the gift of gab can hardly be overstated.

[David Mantell]

18 minutes ago, NintendoLogic said:

Verne Gagne's first major push was as NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion.

He was NWA World Light Heavyweight Champion before that..  But then just after that the title went south to Mexico to join the Welterweight and Middleweight title which had gone south 20 years earlier.

Bothner, Stein and Marshall were significantly smaller than Hodge. Rocca or mid 50s Verne- closer to Europeans like Petit Prince, Michel Saulnier, Johnny Saint. Vic Faulkner, Mick McManus and Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore.

Adrian Street debuted in America having been World Middleweight Champion on-and-off 1977-1981 for Brian Dixon's proto-ASW Wrestling Enterprises Of Birkenhead (which that cheeky Gordon Solie called "the Amateur ranks")

[Timbo Slice]

The other thing about the weight designation in the US was that eventually, most outfits stopped trying to do multiple non-heavyweight weight divisions. Some territories may have had two non-heavies (I believe it was rare), but most decided to name their juniors welter/cruiser/light heavy as the non-heavyweight wrestlers for the most part.

The biggest thing that is probably missing here from a cultural standpoint that might help David (or at least I didn’t see when I skimmed this thread) was that in America in the early part of the century, boxing was king, and being the heavyweight champion of the world meant you were the most popular athlete in the country. As big as Babe Ruth was, there was a level of fame being the heavyweight champion that was unmatched.

With pro wrestling being presented as trying to be somewhat legit relative to boxing around that time, and those earlier matches were seen as competing against the big boxing fare, wrestling tried to mirror that to bring in a lot of the same crowds when they could, and that meant they needed heavyweights to draw against.

Thats not to say the lighter wrestlers weren’t featured, but as heavyweight boxing took off and became the defining sport of the first part of the 20th century (while baseball was popular, the biggest boxing matches were normally more popular), I feel there was a template in place once the NWA took hold and tried to match up similar to the boxing federations.