Hey and welcome to my third Wrestling Wremix. Not to be a Lazy Stu-San but hopefully by this point Blair (@bdinsidepulse) or Chris (@cwsanders39) or those Europeans I met on here will have submitted their own ideas so I can refresh. As always, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@todaysjimsawyer). Sometimes I think about starting my tumblr again, but I have limited patience for gifs and liberal guilt. Let’s get started!
When I first came up with this idea, Cody Rhodes was sort of there. At the time, he may have been tagging with future and former MITB briefcase holder Damian Sandow, or possibly feuding with him over who would get to cash in and job out to John Cena first. Whatever the case, he didn’t have a lot of momentum.
And then something weird happened. They started giving him a focus. They made Cody and the entire Rhodes family the target of the McMahons’ bullying. And by God it worked. He started getting good crowd reactions and closing out shows. But tag teams only last so long. And more importantly, I already wrote some of this out, so dammit someone’s gonna read it.
When “Dashing” Cody Rhodes first began his singles run, his gimmick was that of a metrosexual wrestler, something that I thought was a pretty nifty update of the standard pretty boy archetype as seen by HBK, “The Model” Rick Martel, “Ravishing” Rick Rude, etc. In the 2000s, some men started taking an increased interest in their personal appearance.
But this gimmick also reminded me of something, something that to the WWE’s credit they were actually ahead of.
Cody Rhodes was Schmidt before Schmidt. If you don’t know who Schmidt is, you obviously don’t watch the best live-action sitcom on TV right now, and yeah, that includes “Parks and Rec” and “Community,” chumps.
There you go. That’s “Dashing” Cody Rhodes. A persnickety, slightly OCD, decadent dandy. Just like CM Punk and The Rock, it’s a personality type that can work as both face or heel depending on whether they focus on endearing or annoying. As a face, he’s Dashing. As a heel, his opponents and the fans can call him Douchebag. Whenever he’s in civilian clothes, they can be tailored outfits put together by a stylist. He can start feuds over stolen beauty products. He can mentor a wrestler (maybe someone like Zack Ryder?) and make them over and help them to an Intercontinental or US run. A solid fairly comedic face or heel who nonetheless can show intensity and passion in the ring.
Have fun with it. Show him bragging backstage about only wrestling in Corinthian leather boots imported from Italy. Show him in catering ordering a kale salad and a strawberry parfait. The thing I noticed in those “Dashing” promos was how Cody looked like he was really getting a kick out of the character and enjoying himself.
As always, thoughts are most welcome. If all goes well, this should be my fourth column in four weeks, which is something of a record for me. Somehow I just knew that if I was largely confined to a single room for more than a month, I could churn out a regular column. Thanks, Geritol!
