WWE 205 Live Review - June 6, 2017

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Cedric Alexander def. Noam Dar

Before the never-ending feud between Dar and Rich Swann, it was Alexander vs. Dar before Alexander got hurt earlier this year. As I said for the Swann vs. Dar matches, Dar and Alexander work well together and this was a good match from them (the finish was really well done with Alexander hitting his awesome finisher out of nowhere), but I'm ready for them to move in different directions. Thankfully, Alexander expressed that afterward when he said he was done with Dar.

Mustafa Ali def. Louie Valle

The Ali vs. Drew Gulak feud has been a recurring treat on 205 Live lately, and I have no idea why it hasn't even been mentioned on Raw. Ali looked like a loser in his brief outing against TJP this past Monday night, yet he comes across like one of the division's bigger stars on 205 Live. His unknown opponent scored some offense on him, but Ali ultimately picking up the win without using his high-flying finisher played into his program with Gulak.

WWE Cruiserweight Champion Neville def. TJP

I was worried early on when the crowd wasn't responding to too much of what they were doing (and why would they considering both men are heels), but they picked up the pace down the stretch and this turned out to be a great match. The video package that highlighted TJP and his Cruiserweight Classic victory at the start of the show definitely helped this match with TJP coming close to forcing Neville to tap out before Neville reversed it into the Rings of Saturn, which was excellent. The crowd really thought Neville was on this verge of losing his title, so this honestly exceeded my expectations with how little time they had to build it up.

Overall Show

WWE must be very aware there are a number of glaring issues with the Cruiserweight division and 205 Live at the moment because they took an interesting approach to how they presented the show this week. Yes, the ropes are still purple (sadly), but there were two video packages for TJP and Swann and a rare title defense in the main event, making it a more enjoyable episode than usual. If they aren't going to move the taping to before SmackDown Live, small things like that are significant steps in the right direction.