6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (11 Sept)

3. A Waste Of Cody

Is this the official “Kill more time before it’s WrestleMania season” period on WWE’s calendar?

Cody Rhodes vanquished Dominik Mysterio months ago, during a one-month break from his trilogy with Brock Lesnar. While there’s no real harm in revisiting the feud this fall, Rhodes really hasn’t done much of anything recently.

His last televised match was three weeks ago in a six-man tag against the Judgment Day. Cody’s appearance at Payback was a talk show segment where he introduced Jey Uso and left. And then on Monday night, he came out to talk about Jey, got interrupted immediately by Dominik, and then laid Mysterio and JD McDonagh out in seconds.

This has all the makings of a stall tactic, stretching things out because there’s only so much plotting WWE can do to make it to the Royal Rumble, and so they push things off, skip a week, have him show up but not advance a story, and then maybe nudge things forward next week.

Not every week needs to be a monumental development, but this was just a dud of an appearance. Sure, Cody/Dominik II should be a fun diversion, but everyone has seen it already, and this is going to get into diminishing returns really quickly.