I was chatting with some of my bros over the two-night extravaganza, and I explained that no matter how much my level of involvement to professional wrestling ebbs and flows and wavers throughout the passage of time, there’s always a conceited effort to watch Wrestlemania. It always comes back during Wrestlemania, and Mania and the Royal Rumble are the two shows a year that I feel very strongly about watching live.
This year’s Wrestlemania had a pretty stacked card on paper, and I felt that the WWE had done a pretty decent job of building up a respectable card from top to bottom, and wasn’t going to be anchored solely by Roman Reigns and then everyone else. The Rey and Dominic Mysterio feud caught fire real late, and went from a cliché match to one that had some heat behind it, and as much as I hated the relegation of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens because of the existence of Cody Rhodes, there was still a large amount of interest with their match against the Usos, because the Usos can have great matches against anyone, much less the level of talents that are Sami and Owens.
On paper, I was actually looking forward to night 1 more than the second night, because I thought that the card was better quality than then night 2’s card. But after both shows, I actually thought night 2 was the stronger show, and it really wasn’t even close.
I thought almost all of the matches on night 1 were underperformed by all those involved, which was a little head-scratching considering the level of talent that was on the card. John Cena had a pretty uninspired match with Austin Theory, and was disappointing, Rey and Dominic had too many people get involved with their match which watered things down, Charlotte and Rhea had an uncharacteristically below-par match, and despite it being the best match of the night, I genuinely felt that the Sami/KO vs. Usos match could’ve been better. They were the best by default, because most of the matches prior weren’t as good as they could’ve been.
Night 2 was heavily weighted by the Intercontinental championship match, with Gunther continuing his torrid 2023 defeating both Drew McIntyre and Sheamus in a brutal shit-kicking smack-fest everyone knew it was going to be, and despite my tendency to think that the main event matches are typically predictable and academic, the Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes match served up the drama of genuinely not knowing who was going to win, which made it that much more exciting as it played out.
But speaking of Cody Rhodes, one of the things holding back the anticipation of the show was the almost seemingly inevitably that he was going to be the guy that was going to dethrone Roman Reigns, which as a fan irked the shit out of me, because of all the speculation that he has a world title reign baked into his contract, which is what was a big draw in being able to bring him back from AEW.
So seeing him take the L was kind of surprising to me, because I thought for sure it was going to be the night where the Roman Empire came to an end. Not just because of Cody’s ludicrous contractual obligation to be WWE champion at some point, but Roman had been carrying the company for over 900 days at that point, and Joe Anoa’I probably was due for a long-needed vacation.
No matter though, because unlike a lot of wrestling fans out there, I was over the moon that Roman retained and the greatest championship run since Bruno Sammartino continues on. I think I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’m just not a fan of Cody Rhodes, and I’m quite pleased to see him finally lose a match since he returned to the WWE.
There was actually a point where I really did like Cody, and it was when he was on his singles run right after Dashing Cody Rhodes, and he bust out the classic white-strap Intercontinental championship. I was a big fan of his work at that time, and I felt for the guy when he was denigrated into Stardust, and I understood whole-heartedly why he left the company when he did.
I was pleased for him when he started winning titles like the Ring of Honor world championship, the NWA world championship, and then went to Japan and started succeeding there as well. The spiritual birth of AEW with the initial All In show was commendable, but then it was around this time where AEW formed, and the wrestling world began to really start hearing from Cody a lot more, that my opinion of him started to waver.
I think it was at the first Double or Nothing show, where Cody came out and took a sledgehammer to the replica of the Triple H throne, that I really rolled my eyes hard, and began to start thinking that Cody was kind of lame. For a guy that really wanted to prove how good he was and that the WWE made a mistake with him, the WWE was still squatting in his head with no end in sight if he was going so far out of his way to make such a flagrantly symbolic statement against the company.
But from then on, through the formation of AEW, his (extremely predictable and called by me) eventual departure, and his return to the WWE, it’s like everything he did and every interview he gave, I just started getting fucking tired of the guy.
To get to the point, Cody takes the wrestling business so seriously, it’s obnoxious to hear him talk about it. Which is ironic, because as much as I admire what they do in the ring, I’m not that much of a fan of the Young Bucks, because they’re the polar opposite of Cody and seemingly make a mockery of the industry. I guess I like wrestlers that take the business serious enough to not make a mockery of it, but still respect history, and the stars before them who paved the way for them to have a career in the first place.
The analogy I made is that Cody Rhodes is kind of like the mega tryhard fantasy football player who takes something that’s supposed to be fun and entertaining so seriously, and anyone who tries to talk about it with them, gets an earful of convoluted, holier-than-thou, neckbeard-mouth breather speak about it, which just ruins the mood for everyone who has to hear it. Like Cody gets on the record and talks about how he hates a lot of wrestling terminology, like “heat” and “being over” and overexplains his logic in a manner that the cameras probably didn’t see Stone Cold Steve Austin rolling his eyes out of his head.
And another time, he overexplains how he did go heel in AEW despite always being an obnoxious white meat babyface, by explaining he was such a heel by portraying a mega-face despite everyone hating him, thus making him a heel, which is tantamount to someone trying to claim that the Super Mario Bros. plot was remotely comparable to bible stories.
The point is, because I’m struggling to put into words my general disdain for Cody Rhodes, I just don’t care for the guy, and I was stoked to see him lose. I really hated the fact that his abrupt availability and re-acquisition by the WWE seemingly interrupted a truly beautiful storyline between Roman Reigns, Sami Zayn, the Bloodline and Kevin Owens, and I resented him for it. And although the timeline has already gone off kilter, a small measure of retribution is the fact that Cody doesn’t get the honor of defeating Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania either.
And because I write so much about things retroactively, and the wrestling business never stops, I’m already pleased to see that Cody has been moved on to getting locked into a program with Brock Lesnar, which I actually think is a pretty good transition. Short of Roman Reigns, there’s no bigger name to be with than Brock Lesnar, and for a glory hound like Cody Rhodes, it’s a pretty worthy transition out of the title picture, to a high-profile feud that has no bearing on him threatening Roman Reigns for a little while.
A win-win, as far as I’m concerned. May the Roman streak soar beyond 1,000 days now, and may someone not Cody Rhodes be the one to eventually end it.
