4 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (13 Nov - Results & Review)

2. A Very Real Conversation

Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes aren’t the first WarGames partners who are rivals forming an alliance of convenience. But their interaction Monday night was a breath of fresh air.

Rather than WWE leaning into their usual trope of “Can they get along?” by having tentative teammates run afoul of each other, Seth and Cody shared some awkward looks in the ring during the show-opening promo, when the Judgment Day sowed seeds of division.

Backstage later, the two caught up, and Cody flatly asked to be good for just one night, to set everything aside for WarGames, and they can go back to being rivals the other 364 days of the year. Rollins, to his credit, mulled it over and reiterated that he doesn’t like – and might never like – Rhodes, but he respects him enough to set that aside for Survivor Series.

It wasn’t an award-winning performance or anything, but it was simple and effective at relaying how much these two don’t get along, and how they’re pledging to sideline their grudges to take down the Judgment Day.

And left unsaid – rather than WWE’s usual route of being overt – is that this tentative alliance could fall apart. Rather than point directly to the tension, they attempted to cover it up the way two adults would try to bury the hatchet.