Details on the WWE Cruiserweight Classic; RAW Numbers Up

[cero2k]

Source: f4wonline.com

-- The Wednesday night wrestling block will get a bit more crowded this summer as WWE announced that the much-anticipated WWE Cruiserweight Classic will debut on the Network starting Wednesday, July 13th at 9 PM EST, airing for 10 weeks through a live two-hour finale on Wednesday, September 15th.

Current Smackdown lead man Mauro Ranallo and former WWE Champion Daniel Bryan were announced as "hosts" for the Classic, but it's unclear if they are calling the action or if they will act in a more talking head role.

Also announced was a preview special -- CWC Bracketology -- for Wednesday, July 6th at 9 PM EST where we should get the actual tournament brackets and all 16 first round match matchups.

The Classic will feature 32 talents (some under WWE contract & some not) from around the world in a single-elimination tournament including:

The list:

Kota Ibushi
Gran Metalik
Tajiri
Zack Sabre Jr.
Noam Dar
Cedric Alexander (expected once he announced he was leaving ROH)
Da Mack - A German wrestler
Tony Nese - Evolve talent that qualified at Saturday's iPPV
Zumbi - A Brazilian wrestler who had been working for Elite Lucha Libre but had kind of disappeared
Clement Petout - A bodybuilder from France
Fabian Aichner - A bodybuilder from Italy
Harv Sihra - One of the Bollywood Boyz tag team from British Columbia and half of the GFW tag team champions
Gurv Sihra - The other half of the Bollywood Boyz tag team and brother of Harv
Rich Swann - Anounced even though he's been out of action with a shoulder injury but has apparently healed up
Brian Kendrick
Akira Tozawa - One of the top stars in the Dragon Gate promotion
Jack Gallagher - a U.K. wrestler
Johnny Gargano - a regular in NXT
Tommaso Ciampa - another regular in NXT
Ho Ho Lin - A small wrestler from Hong Kong
TJ Perkins - The former Manik from TNA who was recently cut by that promotion and works for Evolve as TJP
Anthony Bennett - A New Jersey independent wrestler
Drew Gulak - A top independent star that works in Evolve
Tyson Dux - The veteran Canadian independent star
Lince Dorado - Masked Florida independent wrestler that works in Evolve
Sean Maluta - the nephew of Afa Anoa'i, related to a number of current WWE stars
Raul Mendoza - Known as Jinzo in Mexico from the DTU promotion
Kenneth Johnson - a Detroit based independent wrestler
Alejandro Saez - A wrestler from Chile who is known as XL
Damien Slater -An Australian based independent wrestler
Jason Lee - Japanese talent
Arya Daivari - The younger brother of Shawn Daivari, the former WWE talent

-- The hot Raw show and the match to determine the top contender in the third hour proved that if the show is good and has a strong main event, the audience will largely stick with it.

Raw did its best numbers since April 11, eight days after WrestleMania, doing 3.47 million viewers, up from the seasonal lowest mark since 1997 of 2.96 million the week before, a 17 percent increase over the week.

Among the reasons for the increase was lack of television competition, with no major sports and nothing on network TV that did more than 7.1 million viewers. Raw had been hurt in recent weeks particularly by the NBA playoffs and to a lesser extent the NHL playoffs, and Dancing With the Stars. Raw ended up third for the night on cable behind Rizzoli & Isles and Major Crimes on TNT and second in the 18-49 demo behind Love & Hip Hop Atlanta.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.42 million viewers
9 p.m. 3.56 million viewers
10 p.m. 3.42 million viewer