5 Most Insane Things Happening In Wrestling Right Now (Dec 1)
1. 10,000 Reasons To Cherish Cody Rhodes
Cody is set to undertake the most ambitious, erm, undertaking in the history of post-expansion independent wrestling on the back of a dare.
Dave Meltzer was asked on Twitter a while back if ROH was capable of selling out a 10,000-seat arena. "Not any time soon," came his trademark, curt response.
Cody, surely the best worker operating in a landscape of wrestlers, took this as a personal challenge. The ROH World Champion has this week confirmed to Pro Wrestling Sheet that this self-financed endeavour is deep in the process of actually happening. In 2018. Speaking to Busted Open radio, Cody confirmed his pipe dream main event as ROH World Champion Cody Vs. Daniel Bryan. If Bryan answers the challenge, and wrestles his first match in over three years, suddenly 10,000 seats doesn't feel that ambitious. Kenny Omega's U.S. appearances are so scarce that he pulled in excess of 3,000 punters to ROH's recent, record-breaking Global Wars tour. ROH's NJPW relationship hasn't yielded many dream matches, but there's every chance of real main event cross-promotion here, given New Japan's own designs on the North American market.
The show is provisionally entitled ALL IN - which might become ironic when WWE decides to run their own show in whichever market Cody narrows it down to.
Still, you may not rate Cody as an elite pro wrestler worthy of a World title. You may not appreciate his bellyaching over WWE's intellectual property usage of his father's creations.
But if the man can pull this off, and do something to terrify WWE from its anti-meritocratic slumber, he will genuinely become the trailblazer he markets himself as.