4 Ups & 6 Downs From WWE Raw (24 Mar - Results & Review)

Ups…

4. Cody Tries To Make Chicken Salad

After sitting through John Cena’s long-winded explanation of how he planned to ruin wrestling Monday night, Cody Rhodes had the tall task of injecting life back into this story. Thankfully, Rhodes is quite capable of selling ice to an Eskimo.

Cena’s masterplan of winning his 17th world title at WrestleMania 41 and then taking the title away from the fans by retiring as champion wasn’t a bad one on its face, and Cody jumped on one important part: He needs to take it from Rhodes first before he can retire as champ.

Rhodes stumbled a bit by backtracking from last week’s dismissive attitude toward Cena, but he made a solid point that he fought like hell to win the title just once, so he isn’t going to roll over at 'Mania and hand the title over. Cody’s “the timeline of all of professional wrestling hangs in the balance” was a bit melodramatic, but certainly those stakes are bigger than “Will Cena win number 17 and surpass Ric Flair?”

All of this felt like an airplane being built while it’s in mid-flight, a world title feud being written on the fly rather than a well-scripted and planned feud. Given that, it was as well-executed as it could be, and thus it merits a tepid thumbs-up at the end. But that doesn’t erase Cena’s droning performance.

Fair to note that this could get much better if they zero in on Cena's pledge to retire as world champion and treating it as an existential threat. If he's backed by The Rock, Cena could conceivably make that a reality, and that would fuel Cody a lot more than preventing Big Match John from winning his 17th world title.