10 Tremendous Cruiserweights You Forgot Were Part Of WCW

Many hardcore fans believe that the best part of WCW was its Cruiserweight Division. With three hours to kill every Monday night, World Championship Wrestling decided to fill a lot of it with luchadores and other junior heavyweight style wrestlers like Rey Mysterio Jr. and Billy Kidman doing crazy high flying moves as well as more technically oriented grapplers like Dean Malenko and Chris Jericho.

WCW showcased a lot of cruiserweights over the course of Nitro’s existence, so there are loads of names you’d recognize from WWE and TNA but totally forgot that they showed up in this company. Let’s take a look at ten of them.

11 Elix Skipper

As far as underrated, borderline forgotten TNA wrestlers (who aren’t known for prior WWE contributions) go, few are as underrated as Elix Skipper, who in addition to having an incredible name spent some time in WCW in the early 2000s. In addition to holding the singles Cruiserweight Title Skipper has the distinction of being the first WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Champion alongside Kid Romeo. If you don’t remember that title, it lasted about a week before WCW folded.

10 Tokyo Magnum

Also known as Magnum Tokyo (seriously), Tokyo Magnum was one of several Ultimo Dragon students from his Toryumon Gym that made appearances in WCW before finding success in his native Japan wrestling for Dragon Gate and HUSTLE. In WCW, however, his most notable appearances involve repeated attempts to join up with Alex Wright and Disco Inferno, otherwise known as The Dancing Fools. It was apropos, considering Tokyo Magnum’s gimmick is that of a male stripper.

9 Jamie Noble

You may know Jamie Noble from his time in WWE either as one of their cruiserweights or as James Gibson in New Japan and Ring of Honor, but back in WCW, he was the masked Jamie-San, the one white guy in the stable Jung Dragons alongside Kaz Hayashi and his future redneck buddy Jimmy Wang Yang.

In late period WCW when things were really dire and bizarre, Jamie-san and his buds were keeping the cruiserweight tradition alive by having insane matches on PPV undercards.

8 Shark Boy

Here’s another TNA mainstay who showed up in WCW -- Shark Boy, noted Total Nonstop comedy wrestler who regularly parodied Stone Cold and once tried to sue Robert Rodriguez for putting the same two common words together that he did. His WCW contributions are extremely under the radar, with one 1999 match on Thunder (as “Dean Roll”) an a handful of early 2000 WCW Saturday Night appearances against undercard wrestlers like Psychosis, Silver King and the god Norman Smiley.

7 Yuji Nagata

Mr. Blue Justice himself, the veteran Yuji Nagata is a New Japan Pro Wrestling lifer, having joined their dojo in 1992 and wrestling with the company ever since. However, in 1997 Nagata spent 18 months wrestling for NJPW working partner, WCW. Managed by Sonny Ono, Nagata unsuccessfully challenged for the US, TV, and Cruiserweight titles and had a feud with Ultimo Dragon for a couple of months. He was even a playable character in the Nintendo 64 game WCW/nWo Revenge!

6 Christopher Daniels

Known for his time in TNA, Ring of Honor, and AEW, Christopher Daniels is one of those veterans that has been everywhere and done everything, and that extends to a smattering of WCW matches (with hair!) from 2000 to 2001. Aside from one dark and one televised match on Nitro, all of his work showed up on the syndicated WCW Worldwide. Believe it or not, Christopher Daniels -- Christopher Daniels -- has fewer, less consistent, and lower profile WCW appearances than Shark Boy -- Shark Boy.

5 Hurricane Helms

At this point, former WWE Cruiserweight champion Gregory Helms is best known for his superhero gimmick The Hurricane, which he frequently adopts whenever the E hits him up for one-off nostalgia appearances. Back in WCW, he was Shane Helms, a member of the extremely timely, boy-band-themed stable 3 Count alongside Shannon Moore and Evan Karagias.

It’s a silly gimmick, but 3 Count was part of that aforementioned late period WCW, having wild ladder matches with The Jung Dragons.

4 Jerry Lynn

Jerry Lynn is one of those well tenured workhorse type guys who wrestled all over the place, most notably for ECW, but worked for TNA and early 2000s WWE as well. Before all that, he spent two years in the mid-’90s in WCW, where he wrestled as the masked (and hilariously named) Mr. JL. He was mostly a jobber, but did challenge for the Cruiserweight and US titles once each before getting injured and subsequently fired in 1997.

3 CIMA

You may know CIMA from his appearances with Strong Hearts in AEW -- or, if you’re really cool, from his long tenure in Dragon Gate -- but sharp eyes and keen memories will remember a super young Shiima Nobunaga showing up for random matches on Monday Nitro alongside fellow Toryumon students Judo Suwa and Tokyo Magnum. He didn’t compete for the Cruiserweight Title or anything, but his presence offers yet another one of AEW’s many connections to the original TNA wrestling show.

2 X-Pac

You know Sean Waltman better as 1-2-3 Kid and probably best as X-Pac, the high flier member of D-Generation X who loved to shove his crotch in opponents faces while they were seated in the corner. But between those two WWE gimmicks, he spent a couple years in WCW as the nWo’s resident cruiserweight Syxx (which is 1+2+3, kid), where he actually held the Cruiserweight Championship for over four months. Unfortunately, a mix of backstage politics and a neck injury resulted in Syxx’s firing from the company, and eventually he returned to WWF.

1 AJ Styles

AJ Styles -- yes, that AJ Styles -- showed up tragically late in WCW’s run, as in about one month before Nitro’s final episode. Styles and wrestler Air Paris were making a splash in Atlanta’s NWA Wildside, so WCW snapped them up and paired them in a tag team called Air Raid. To really underline the gimmick, AJ Styles got renamed Air Styles and they came to the ring in Top Gun cosplay. Air Raid entered the tournament for the doomed WCW Cruiserweight Tag belts, but did not win and once WCW folded, Styles ended up moving to Ring of Honor followed by TNA.

Next: 10 WCW Cruiserweight Wrestlers You’ve Probably Forgotten