What it boils down to for WWE talent is size. There just aren't that many big dudes on the indies with an acceptable WWE size. Nowadays the indies are completely littered with relative sized midgets and that is not what the E is looking for for a few reasons.
1. With the exception being Rey, who has the Chicano audience, little guys just don't draw. Jeff Hardy was skinny but he was what? 6 ft? Benoit and Guerrerro were short stacks but they had the build (thanks, Steroids!) Jericho has to have like an inch or two added to his workboots to get him the height he needed for his career to reach the heights it did. (Pun intended!)
-Little guys don't draw and never have because for how much we internet smarks clamor for an Evan Bourne or some other spot monkey to headline, we make up the minority of fans. A majority of fans are still hillbilly, old fashioned, lower class people like my father. They just don't buy into little dudes toppling guys that are 6 inches and 50-100 pounds heavier, and it makes sense. I mean people complain about how Rey ws jobbed to all these monsters during his title reign, but it made sense. People would have called bullshit with him beating Kahli and Henry, etc. Having smalls beat bigs would make wrestling appear even faker than it already is, having cruisers doing some of the overly contrived moves they do on the indies awes alot of smarks but to people who've had success running the biz it takes away and cheapens the "realness" of standard wrestling. Sorry guys, but being able to grab a headlock or a rest hold is more pivotal to being a successful wrestler than doing spot monkey type moves that get an "ooo" or "ahh" or a "holy shit". You have to be able to work the crowd for an entire match, not for just certain spots. That formula has never worked and really never will, there aren't enough smarks to fund the E to change, if there were RoH would be the top promotion in the world, dudes like Kenny Omega and Chuck Taylor would be headlining WrestleMania and TNA wouldn't need to bring in yester-year's top acts. That's just one of those "just the way it is" things in wrestling.
I'm not saying a wrestler has to have a Batista physique, but you have to be a legit 6 ft+ and a solid 215+ to stand a real chance at being successful in the business. And that's hows it's always been in the biz from Thesz all the way to Cena with Rey being the exception. Cruisers have their place on the card and they serve their purpose, but to think of a cruiser as your "World Heavyweight Champion" isn't feasible, no matter what the IWC thinks.
And the E development system doesn't have too many legit bigs to pick up from the Indies, they have to look outside of wrestling to get guys, like in Martial Arts to get a Kozlov and so on. Plus another HUGE reason is the poor booking and preparation they receive down in Florida, it isn't what Cena, Batista and so on were getting in OVW.
