The many sins of Cody Rhodes

[RedRooster]

3 hours ago, jazzygeofferz said:

Whole promoting Battle Of The Belts Cody likens winning a championship to winning an academy award. Could he ruin kayfabe any more?

I’ll preface this by saying I’ve not heard his exact wording, but I think that’s OK. It plays into the suggestion that he’s ‘gone Hollywood’ (wording he used himself), and works in terms of prestige just as much as it does the idea of being ‘awarded’ a title. If the idea is to imply Cody is viewing everything through the context of having one foot out the door, I’d go as far as to call it clever. It probably isn’t, though. Cody hasn’t demonstrated that level of awareness in quite some time.

Edited January 6, 2022 by RedRooster
A typo that Carbomb’s keen eye noticed!

[Carbomb]

3 hours ago, RedRooster said:

Cody is viewing everything through the context of having one foot out the foot

Suddenly the Owen Hart cup makes a lot of sense

[69MeDon]

I love the idea that Cody's version of "going Hollywood" is getting a reality show and a judging slot on a TV talent show on TBS. I wish Bret Hart had done a "gone Hollywood" thing when he was appearing in Lonesome Dove.

Edited January 7, 2022 by 69MeDon

[LaGoosh]

Another one I remembered. On the Blood & Guts show with a war games main event called Blood & Guts where every wrestler in the match bled - in Cody's match against QT Marshall earlier on the show Cody decided to do a blade job. Absolute berk.

Edited January 21, 2022 by LaGoosh

[Jonny Vegas]

Just seen Cody's promo from last weeks Dynamite. It is just so confusing to me.

There are so many odd parts of it though, especially when he says "people have been telling me to save this promo". I understand everyone knows wrestling is a big pre planned circus but fucking hell.

The entire promo seemed to make absolutely no sense whilst he rambled on going off at a tangent about numerous seemingly random topics with no identifiable links to each other, including but not limited to - I wont ever turn heel because you guys cheered me when I needed it, CM Punks pipe bomb was brilliant wasnt it, see how I said it was brilliant well actually it was shit because he didnt do anything he said but I was in NJPW and ROH, me and Ricky Starks are really good mates in real life, Brody King is good aint he but its shite to come into a company where someone else had the name Brodie and he died thats not on really, at the same time though we didnt change his name because WWE does that and they're shit arent they, titles that dont say World in them are secondary...but not this one...but this one is secondary because there's two of them, Sammy lets have a ladder match.

When those people said save that promo I think maybe that was their polite way of saying dont do it at all.

He makes a point about saying he wont turn heel but 90% of it is exactly what a heel would say. 

He's gotten to a point where I think people have lost so much interest in him that I don't see what direction he can move in. That promo wad met with 90% absolute silence with the occasional heckle and one guy shouting "stfu" throughout.

If he now turns heel I doubt many people care as he's strayed so far into X Pac heat territory where people aren't booing because they dont like what his character is doing, they just cannot be fucked with him. If he stays face its just going to get increasingly awkward for him as he comes out and rambles to progressively lesser reactions of any sort.

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Jonny Vegas

[IronSheik]

That fucking tattoo. 🤦‍♂️

[Jonny Vegas]

I remember when he talked directly about it I believe in a promo and he said along the lines of "I wear a lot of brands but never my own and that's why I decided to change that".

Made absolutely no sense as at the time he was wearing and shilling his own T-shirt's weekly but the big difference was his Louboutin shoes and Gucci belt aren't tattooed around his fucking neck.

[WyattSheepMask]

2 minutes ago, Jonny Vegas said:

I remember when he talked directly about it I believe in a promo and he said along the lines of "I wear a lot of brands but never my own and that's why I decided to change that".

Was that the same promo where talked about “literally putting my neck on the line for this brand”? Just in case we didn’t get the oh so subtle symbolism 

[HarmonicGenerator]

9 hours ago, Jonny Vegas said:

He makes a point about saying he wont turn heel but 90% of it is exactly what a heel would say. 

 

Maybe he's already turned heel and we're all just too dumb to realise it. "I'll never be a bad guy" is precisely what a delusional bad guy would say!

Giving him too much credit?

[Jonny Vegas]

I really wish that is what they were doing and where they were going with it but sadly it defo isn't. I used to think Cody felt like a big deal when he was on the shows but now it is just brutal.

[BomberPat]

20 minutes ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Maybe he's already turned heel and we're all just too dumb to realise it. "I'll never be a bad guy" is precisely what a delusional bad guy would say!

Giving him too much credit?

Definitely too much credit. It's the same sort of thing that someone I knew used to say about John Cena (and I think Triple H said about Roman Reigns), that they don't need to turn him heel, because the people who want to boo him already do. But it's a massive misunderstanding/misrepresentation of how wrestling works to sum up a heel as just "someone that the audience boos". 

Cody Rhodes is just a firm believer in the idea that wrestling has moved beyond faces and heels, but what he thinks is nuance is just inconsistency - so he's heel one minute and face the next, and he doesn't seem to have a filter to step in and say when something doesn't make sense. On top of that, every promo and match seems to have at least one moment that comes across like he thought of something cool and, rather than wait until the appropriate time, just threw it out there at the first available opportunity. 

17 minutes ago, Jonny Vegas said:

I really wish that is what they were doing and where they were going with it but sadly it defo isn't. I used to think Cody felt like a big deal when he was on the shows but now it is just brutal.

I think he's the biggest victim of bigger signings coming in, and of AEW's own success. He's no longer the face of the company to most of the fanbase, he can't dine out on being the ex-WWE star who had the courage to bet on himself and walk away and do his own thing when he's been out of WWE for six years, and when the likes of Moxley, Danielson and Punk have all followed that path more recently. The likes of Page and Omega have worked really well with the newer signings so that their credibility rubs off and they feel bigger names for it, much like how Sting's primary purpose has been to have his stardom rub off on Sting, while Cody's been doing almost the opposite - doing the same schtick since he debuted, actively keeping himself separated from the likes of Danielson and Punk, and surrounding himself with his own microverse.

He's still being booked as if he's the big star that can make stars of others, whether that be Brandi Rhodes or QT Marshall. But, with the possible exception of Darby Allin - and even he had to weather a nonsensical "make Cody look strong" finish in one of their matches, and an immediate pivot to "make it about all Cody" in another - I don't think anyone's come out of a feud with Cody better than they went in, and most of those programmes seem to be built around allowing Cody a "moment" more than any real consideration for the other guy. 

He's yesterday's man, basically. Something needs to change to fix that, and either he or AEW seem stubbornly opposed to doing that - and a large part of that is probably down to his outside commitments and the continuing project of making him a mainstream star.

[Jazzy G]

It was when he got that tattoo. Everything started taking a downward turn for him when he got that tattoo.

[CavemanLynn]

You can't cheer someone who wants to be liked, and you can't boo someone who wants to be liked. It's just awkward for everyone. The wild swings from measured smugness to vein-popping melodrama would be warning signals for manic depression if everything weren't so deliberate. If he genuinely believes there's a set sequence of spots you do and then the crowd SHOULD like you, then he's staggeringly misguided. Then again, all his meta digs and approach to matches shows he's a complete product of the WWE system. Cody doth protest too much.

[HarmonicGenerator]

I still don't think he was that hard done by in his WWE run. Stardust couldn't have been fun, but Cody got a singles match at WrestleMania three years in a row at a time when most people only got on the card in a multi-man match, if they got on the main card at all. They did think something of him for a while there.

[Duke]

52 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

 I don't think anyone's come out of a feud with Cody better than they went in, and most of those programmes seem to be built around allowing Cody a "moment" more than any real consideration for the other guy. 

95% agree, but MJF definitely grew in the Cody feud, and I think there's a decent argument that Brodie Lee did too. Malachi Black nearly did, but it dragged and got lost.

I do think Cody just can't do basic psychology, which is baffling seeing as he's in most segments with ARN ANDERSON. 

I also read that Brandi is on an 8 match winning streak. Why? What is the purpose of that other than ego?