People often like to say that the belts are worthless in modern-day “sports entertainment” & they’ll cite things like Cena’s 10 reigns as WWE Champion in order to back their viewpoint up. It’s kind of hard to argue with that kind of logic when you think about how long it took Ric Flair to rack up his 16 (or thereabouts, depending on who’s book you go by) runs as World Champion. HHH has been going for less than half of Flair’s career & has managed to rack up 13 runs with whatever they decided was the big belt at the time, it’s safe to say he booked himself into a bunch of them, but Hunter is about half way between Flair and Cena in terms of worthy runs.
Right now CM Punk has been WWE Champion for just over 4 months & everyone under the sun seems to be praising him, so i’m gonna focus on someone else…
At the time of writing, Cody Rhodes has held the Intercontinental Championship for 6 full months.
Does Cody even deserve a run with the IC title? I’d say that’s debatable.
If we look at the WWE roster, who hasn’t had a belt yet? It doesn’t take Hulk Hogan to tell you that a lot of the guys they have under contract aren’t ready yet (brother!). Most of the guys they gave a belt to early just kind of stumbled slowly & worked their way down the card.
If we look at some classic IC Champions that went on to bigger things, guys like Austin, The Rock, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Randy Savage, Warrior… Cody’s name doesn’t exactly fit in.
Some big names who made it no further than the IC title include Honky Tonk Man, Steamboat, Piper, Razor Ramon & Goldust. Goldust? maybe I’m getting warmer here…
Vince & Duthty didn’t exactly get along in the 90’s, so his son Dustin was stuck with a transvestite gimmick that nobody really thought would run for 10+ years. As stupid as it was at the time, it was still a gimmick. The wig, the gold suit, the OTT commentary Vince would give whenever “this thing” walked down the ramp… Cody, on the other hand, didn’t even get a set of kneepads until he’d been with the company for 4 years.
Cody had a plastic mask thing & it didn’t really work out, maybe they should’ve had him fight Rey in a mask v mask match to end that feud. He had a weird sort of Patrick Bateman thing going on in his promos as well, but it’s not ’93 so it’s kinda hard to push someone as a heel on the grounds that they take care of their skin & aren’t all that attracted to ugly people.
“What’s your fucking point?”
This 6 months reign has done more for Cody in terms of establishing him & solidifying his place on the card than 4 years of paper bags, promos that look like Gillette adverts, repeatedly being told he’s related to The American Dream & whatever it was he was doing buggering about with Bob Holly.
- Character
Nothing at all really, we know he’s kind of an arrogant bad guy & he’s sort of narcissistic. WWE seems to think that 1 attribute will cut it these days (Truth is crazy, Punk likes to moan, Cena is stoic, Orton kicks people in the head, Big Show is big, Fella is white, Swagger is, uh, American…) & this lanky mother fucker somehow ended up with two things going for him? He must’ve impressed someone backstage (other than his father & brother, obviously).
- In-ring ability
He’s not botching left, right & centre, so he’s at least above Sin Cara, Morrison (RIP), etc. He’s not hurting anyone, unlike Orton (who had Cody drowning in his own blood after that thing with the ring bell) Miz & a whole bunch of the divas (NOTE TO SELF: Do not piss off Alicia Fox). He doesn’t have a terrible or limited move set (i’m not gonna surprise anyone by saying the guys in 30 min long matches do about half of the moves that the under-card does in less than a third of that time). His finisher is, well, it’s a bit rubbish & kind of looks like he’s hurting himself rather than the opponent.
- Total
I’d say he’s just above average.
“You took a whole article to tell us that Cody is just “average”?”
What i’m talking about here is the power of good booking. Cody might be average in the ring, but he’s been booked to look reasonably good due to high profile feuds with the likes of Orton &, obviously, that 6 month long title reign.
Good booking will get a guy far these days, look at Mark Henry. He was booked to look like a monster & that resulted in the best run of his 15 year stint with the company. Bryan’s heel turn has been reasonably well booked & Orton v Barrett makes a lot of sense too (unless that match on last week’s Smackdown has killed the angle). Smackdown is often thought of as “the B show”, but their booking over the last six months has been a lot stronger (and far more logical) than what they have on RAW.
Think i’m a moron/genius? Let me know in the comments. Only those two choices though, you writing a comment about me being average is like me writing an article about Cody- oh, fuck!
Wondering who I am? Check out CB’s interview with me from last year.
