The many sins of Cody Rhodes

[Lenin]

"I’m looking to move toward undiscovered terrain. I want to create what’s never happened before, so I am going to take a different approach than any other wrestler. That’s what I am looking forward to doing." (Credit 411s interview or report with Cody Rhodes)

 

So he is being absolutely true to his goals and obviously succeeding if by "a different approach" he means forced, completely unnatural, boring and unimportant in every way. 

I do wonder what the other VPs/founders of AEW actually think about him because he's easily the worst thing on the show, every time he's on the show. As for Brandi, it's Stephanie McMahon levels of trying to get herself over. Cringe.

Edited December 2, 2021 by Suplex Sinner

[poetofthedeed]

At the end of the day, is it as simple as he's bitterly jealous that Dustin got Dusty's mind for the business and he's desperately sacrificing his body to emulate his old man?

[Devon Malcolm]

The writing was on the wall early on in AEW when he destroyed that throne with a sledgehammer. What a fucking berk.

[Mr Butternut Squash]

He's a quirky bastard and I used to love him for it but I just don't care about him anymore. The worst thing is now guys like Pac, Andrade and Black are getting lost to the Codyverse - a sloppy mess where the stories and matches make no sense, everyone's getting the wrong reaction and all the attention is on Cody and his overwrought bullshit. He needs to stop trotting Arn out there too, poor sod.

[DavidB6937]

I think they think doubling down on how he is will make people hate him more but the problem is it's not the right kind of heat at the moment. I'm not quite sure how they turn it around really.

[BrodyGraham]

Cody thinks he's playing 4d chess with the audience and has been from the start. In a company that does heel/face dynamics so well Cody's either/neither/both shit just feels unnecessary and distracting.

I don't care if he turns, if he's already turned, if he's heel, face or blazing a new trail. I just want him to fuck off, the pigeon kneed dullard.

[air_raid]

3 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

The writing was on the wall early on in AEW when he destroyed that throne with a sledgehammer. What a fucking berk.

I’m informed that allusions to the opposition are to make it more real, and as such, timeless.

[theringmaster]

But the flip side to all this is if he does a long awaited heel turn, the crowd will start cheering for him and he will get praise online and then be a dreaded 'popular and cool heel', that in this modern era is essentially a face. See: Pete Dunne

[Vamp]

To be fair to him people were fellating him for breaking the throne, having the biggest entrance, being carried to a good match by his brother and his bollocks promos for ages. He's always been pathetic in AEW. And it's never been building to a heel turn despite people desperately looking for excuses. 

Still, give him another 10 years, knacker his knees a bit, and I reckon he might age well like his brother. 

Edit: He should probably be raked over coals for the Agogo match though. Totally killed a potential star there.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Vamp

[LaGoosh]

2 hours ago, BrodyGraham said:

Cody thinks he's playing 4d chess with the audience and has been from the start. In a company that does heel/face dynamics so well Cody's either/neither/both shit just feels unnecessary and distracting.

I don't care if he turns, if he's already turned, if he's heel, face or blazing a new trail. I just want him to fuck off, the pigeon kneed dullard.

Yeah he definitely thinks he's doing some kind of  revolutionary meta self aware tweener act. He's not, he's just shite.

[BrodyGraham]

35 minutes ago, theringmaster said:

But the flip side to all this is if he does a long awaited heel turn, the crowd will start cheering for him and he will get praise online and then be a dreaded 'popular and cool heel', that in this modern era is essentially a face. See: Pete Dunne

Cody Rhodes is the furthest thing from being cool though and I honestly think that the crowd are just exasperated now. People don't want Cody to be a heel, they just want this bollocks to stop, but he thinks he's manipulating them into a reaction. The thing is by now a lot of people don't want to boo or cheer Cody. He's got Fuck Off Heat.

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, Vamp said:

To be fair to him people were fellating him for breaking the throne, having the biggest entrance, being carried to a good match by his brother and his bollocks promos for ages. He's always been pathetic in AEW. And it's never been building to a heel turn despite people desperately looking for excuses. 

I don't remember anyone, other than the usual tribalists who'll cheer for anything their side does, thinking the throne breaking bit was anything other than misplaced self-indulgent nonsense. It certainly wasn't well liked on here.

Cody's biggest weakness is understanding storytelling beats without understanding the story he's trying to tell, or how to get there. The Ogogo match was an egregious example of it, but so was the angle with Arn, so was him turning a match against his own brother into some weird anti-Attitude Era tirade, so was him getting the feud with QT Marshall even though it was Dustin that QT turned on. Early on, he worked heel in a match against Darby Allin, then Shawn Spears ran in and turned heel by hitting him with a chair. A heel turn by a guy we didn't know well enough to know that he wasn't already a heel, on a guy who had just worked heel. Try plotting that one out.

Early on, he could get away with it because he was the public face of AEW. People liked the company itself enough that it reflected on to Cody, he was someone they saw as a bit of an underdog fighting the good fight, and that connection to the audience meant that they could forgive all the self-indulgence and the janky booking. But when, invariably, none of that booking has actually gone anywhere, when we got more and more of "Cody Rhodes has a special announcement", and when the company's been around long enough to have pulled in some bigger stars and for people to have found new favourites, and as Tony Khan has become more of a public figure, so Cody's role as "face of the company" has been reduced, none of that goodwill is left. 

He's a guy who could tell a good story when all he had was one big match on a PPV with a few months to build to it, but whoever his stories are being booked, they just don't work for weekly TV, and his matches have the exact same problem with pacing that his stories do. They're packed with "moments" designed to be impactful or emotional, but just crowbarred in with no sense of why they're happening or what they're meant to achieve, and they never amount to anything.

He was due to retire after losing to Malakai Black, came back for revenge, lost to him again, and then was just in a random midcard tag match the following week with no explanation given to why he's not retiring any more. He spent a couple of weeks at odds with Arn Anderson, with Arn seemingly turning on him or abandoning him, but then came out with Arn in his corner as if nothing happened. They've teased those two falling out before, and again it never went anywhere. That's every Cody Rhodes story - a lot of content with no meaning or purpose.

[WyattSheepMask]

The opening post pretty summed him up entirely.

As a wrestler, perfectly serviceable and capable of putting on a decent match, sometimes even a great match when paired with the right person. But fuck me does he think he’s a much bigger star than he actually is. He has the biggest entrance out of anyone on the show where he even has his own special area to come out of

I spoke at the time about him shifting the focus of the Ladder match at Revolution, where of course he was the sole babyface in the match, and that’s something that has bled into other matches. Even before that match, when he dropped the TNT Title to Darby Allen for example, the story wasn’t that Darby had won, it was that Cody had lost and what was next for him.

They might be the nicest people in the world offscreen, but he & Brandi are a right pair insufferable cunts onscreen. As others have mentioned, good on them for starting a family. But that announcement video, especially in how they did it immediately after Moxley had mentioned his and Renee’s own pregnancy in a pretty low-key fashion. Obviously that was partly a matter of timing & coincidence and I hope they didn’t intend to, but it did come as across if they needed to one up Moxley & Renee.  
That gender reveal with the Wrestlemania pyro too - fuck right off.

He’s often the worst thing about anything that he’s involved in. He’s basically the Jared Leto of AEW, maybe even wrestling entirely

Edited December 3, 2021 by WyattSheepMask

[JimmyAnderson]

I find one of the major problems with his latest feuds is there is no real reason to them and that's partly because of his "not challenging for the World Title" stipulation. They can't add a number one contenders match in there to spice things up, they don't have him mixing it up with the World champion because of it and because there's no World Title involvement, AEW/Cody try and make his feuds feel bigger than they are with all the bells and whistles that go with his feuds/matches. 

I'm not saying every feud needs to involve the World Title (or any championship for that matter - see Punk/Kingston) but there does need to be some reward for people. And because Cody can't be involved in the World Title picture, his opponents seemingly can't be either which leads to every feud becoming the same. A new heel comes to AEW, calls out the face of AEW - Cody Rhodes, wins a match, loses the rematch, loses the third match and it's repeated for the next bloke to walk into AEW. All the while there's nothing on the line or at stake, which doesn't help matters either. 

A feud between Adam Cole and himself over the Elite's next leader, could result in a double turn. Cole is over as fuck and gets huge reactions to his antics and Cody needs a different direction. 

[CL Punk]

1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

He’s often the worst thing about anything that he’s involved in. He’s basically the Jared Leto of AEW, maybe even wrestling entirely

Oh wow...is Cody that bad? Is he sending Pac, Andrade and Black bullets with their names on and used condoms? I don't think Cody is that insufferable.

The worse thing is that Cody believes that he is the babyface and he dresses up like Homelander.