To borrow a favorite phrase of our tired hero: “Enough!”
Enough. Please, for the love of god.
I do not want to watch Cody Rhodes become King of the Ring. I don’t want to watch him fight Gunther, and I certainly don’t want to see him fight John Cena again. If anybody out there is listening, I am begging you: do not force us to endure another Cody Rhodes title run.
How far we’ve come, right? I remember the “We Want Cody” movement. Hell, I wanted Cody, too! Wrestlemania 39 was a beautiful executed gut punch; they built us up and then swiped our legs out from under us. Roman retained, and the message was clear: good guys finish last.
When the build for Wrestlemania 40 threatened to veer off in an unrelated direction—worse, a corporatized, spoon-fed, Roman-centric storyline with none other than his own cousin, The Rock—audiences pushed pack. They went online, they made signs, they took over live events with their chants of: “We Want Cody!”
And the craziest part of it all was that WWE actually listened.
Instead of Roman vs. The Rock, we ended up with two nights of Cody in the main event: a tag match alongside his planned Wrestlemania opponent Seth Rollins, and another well-deserved chance at the Roman’s Undisputed title. Cody’s ultimate victory was a high-point, looking back: a victory for everybody. The crowds changed the narrative, & Cody finished the story. Michael Cole screaming, “I love professional wrestling!” still lives rent-free in my head, like a favorite song playing on repeat. In that moment, didn’t we all feel the same?
I’ll be honest: I’m a hater. I was sick of it before Wrestlemania 41. After a slow, earned payoff, the story felt finished. Was WWE too afraid to steer things in a different direction after the fans revolted last time? Or did they really believe Cody was “The Guy”?
Or did the real truth lie somewhere in the middle; was Cody, a beloved babyface with a humanizing lisp who looks dynamite in a three-piece-suit (even on a roller coaster), TKO’s chosen man? The handsome face of a new, marketing-focused company, capitalizing on his moment in the spotlight to sell some vodka and plug his podcast?
We don’t have to talk about the main event of WrrestleMania 41 for long, I promise. While I’m a firm believer that it wasn’t as bad as everybody makes it out to be, (seriously, guys, it wasn’t the worst WrestleMania of all time. It wasn’t even the worst WrestleMania in Las Vegas) I’m definitely not going to defend it, either. WWE made their decision, and that finish is just one they’ll have to live with.
And while WM 41 marked the end of Cody’s year-long reign, it also served as his fourth consecutive WrestleMania Main Event, in a run that included two back-to-back Royal Rumble victories, and I realized that I was ready to watch somebody else be on top for a while.
Instead, this weekend, Cody Rhodes will compete against Randy Orton in the King of the Ring Tournament Finals. When If he wins, he will be rewarded with a title match at Summer Slam against the Champion of his choosing. It’s pretty easy to see a world in which he challenges just about anybody: John Cena or Gunther, both classic “bad guys,” are each an obvious booking. Goldberg is probably a bit more of a reach, but even if he manages to eek out a final title run after his match with Gunther at Saturday Night’s Main Event, he’s likely going to want to dump the belt pretty quickly. And who better to put over than the company’s Golden (Haired) Boy?
And before anybody says it, I know how wrestling works. I know that you need classic, good guy types who will always align with the forces of good and fight for noble and just causes, just for the sake of maintaining order and honoring their own sense of morality. I know that we as fans spent decades saying our prayers and eating our vitamins, but I just can’t listen to Kingdom every week for another ten years. Especially not on a roster so loaded with talent that hasn’t been given a chance: LA Knight (Yeah), Melo, Theory, Kross—the list goes on.
I’m ready to say it: We don’t want Cody. Not anymore.
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