10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About WrestleMania 28
9. The Big Show Beat Cody Rhodes
Leading into WrestleMania 28, the feud between Intercontinental Champion Cody Rhodes and The Big Show was one of the most "meta" in the history of the event. After crossing paths in the Royal Rumble and Elimination Chamber matches, Rhodes began taunting Show for never having had a WrestleMania moment, and would even cost him victories by distracting him with video evidence of that fact (such as clips of Show's loss to Akebono at WrestleMania 21, or his position as WWE New York's official host for WrestleMania X8). That built to a title match between the two in Miami, where Show scored a quick win to capture the Intercontinental Championship for the first time. The match lived up to the program in the sense that it wasn't worthy of WrestleMania, and Rhodes - who had been champion for 236 days - was robbed of his momentum on one of the few occasions he'd actually managed to gather some. The feud didn't end there, of course. Show began taunting Rhodes after WrestleMania, showing video footage of his victory at the show of shows to distract the former champion. They had a table rematch at Extreme Rules the following month, which Rhodes won when he dropkicked Show on the apron, forcing him to step through a table. Yup.
Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried.
*Best Crowd of the Year, 2013