6 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE Raw (April 25)

Downs…

5. A Misfire For Cody?

Cody Rhodes Randy Orton
WWE.com

We don’t want to sound the alarm here, but after last week’s countout win, it felt a bit odd to see Cody Rhodes reduced to Randy Orton’s silent tag partner Monday night.

Cody came out as Riddle’s surprise guest for Orton’s 20th-anniversary celebration, but before he could say anything, Seth Rollins interrupted, kicking off a promo train that gave us an eight-man tag match for the main event.

The match itself was fine, with Orton nailing four RKOs for the win. But Cody was little more than a body in the ring, doing not much more than Ezekiel, albeit with more crowd support. But this was clearly Orton’s show.

So why was Rhodes out there? Simple comparison: Could you see Roman Reigns out there in a similar situation, getting roped into an eight-man tag (pretend the Usos weren’t involved)? What about Brock?

This isn’t some huge problem, and the answer really is simple: Cody is a major draw for WWE right now, so putting him in a match will hopefully get eyeballs on it. But in the weeks since Mania, he’s beaten Miz, defeated Kevin Owens via countout, and now won an eight-man tag match. It’s something that bears mentioning here and watching for the next several weeks.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.