The Bollywood Boyz give their take on why the WWE Cruiserweight Tag Titles were not formally introduced.
Following the Cruiserweight Classic tournament in 2016, members of that tournament began to compete on Monday Night Raw and in November of that year, that 205 Live brand launched.
In the first match of 205 Live’s history, The Bollywood Boyz (Harv & Gurv Sihra) took on Tony Nese and Drew Gulak. This past summer, it was shared by Oliver Claffey (Jack Gallagher) that there were plans to introduce WWE Cruiserweight Tag Titles.
Harv and Gurv confirmed that during their interview with The Wrestling Classic. Harv assumes that the titles were not formally introduced because outside of The Bollywood Boyz, there were not many traditional tag teams in the division that were not make-shift.
Harv (Sunil): There were Cruiserweight Tag Titles made. Yeah, but they never brought them onto the show.
That could’ve been it [that The Bollywood Boyz were the only traditional tag team on 205 Live]. I think there was no tag teams.
Gurv (Samir): Yeah, there was all singles, right? So…
After their 205 Live debuts, Harv and Gurv were sent back to NXT and they were put into Robbie Brookside’s class. They did not know why they were moved away from 205 Live, but they had a feeling they were going to be released from WWE.
Several months later, they were told to come to SmackDown and it was there that they learned about the start of their on-screen partnership with Jinder Mahal.
Harv (Sunil): So it was kind of like, I don’t know what — the plans changed or like, ‘We’ll wait’ [concerning the Cruiserweight Tag Titles] but we’re the only tag team and yeah, we went back down to NXT and when we got back down, nobody kind of expected us to come back down so, we kind of just got put into [Robbie] Brookside’s class which is the beginner class so we weren’t even really doing the Coconut shows or getting on NXT TV so that was, you know, a good wake up call, you know, being in the WWE NXT system where it’s like okay, we did 205. It was such a high and now we’re kind of in the classes kind of just waiting to get called on NXT.
Gurv (Samir): I personally — and I know Harv, you probably felt the same way. When that happened, I’m like, ‘Yo, we’re gonna get cut. There’s no reason they’re gonna bring us on 205 in the first match and then we go back down to NXT.’ But literally, we busted our asses in the Brookside classes. Every morning, every day, we were hustling and you know, we were garnering so much respect from everybody that we were working with at that time and you know, and then again, going back to what we were talking about literally 20 minutes ago, expecting a phone call when you least expect it. Here we were thinking we might be on the chopping block after Christmas or after we come back because this is late November, you go home for the holidays in December and then we came back in January. January, you know, we were still hustling. We got put into Scotty 2 Hotty’s class. I think we did another month at Brookside before Scotty 2 Hotty and then literally, I kid you not, it was a Friday afternoon. The Performance Center used to do weekly yoga classes and we were doing yoga from like 11 to 12 and I go back upstairs at the Performance Center into a locker room, I look at my phone and there’s a text message from the travel department saying, ‘Hey, they need you at TV on Tuesday in Louisville’ and I’m like, ‘Woah,’ show my phone to Harv. We’re like, ‘Okay, cool’ but nobody from the Performance Center knew that we were gonna go down there so this is like, I guess, nobody communicated that but, anyways, we thought we were going back for 205 Live because they taped 205, like I said, after SmackDown on Tuesdays at that time and then we show up to Louisville, Kentucky and sure enough, we were told, ‘Hey, this is what’s gonna happen. We don’t know how big it’s gonna get, but you guys are debuting tonight with Jinder Mahal.’
Both Harv and Gurv are still active in the ring. They competed for the DEFY Tag Team Titles in December. Harv is also pursuing a career in acting and recently auditioned for a lead in a Netflix film.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit The Wrestling Classic with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
