This moment is a hard one to judge, so its going to get a very mild down here. With the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic complete, NXT brought out the Rhodes family to present the inaugural trophy. They even went the extra step of having Eden Stiles (Brandy Runnels, Codys wife) do the ring announcing. Also out there were the American Dreams sons, Cody and Dustin. Neither man was in his paint, which can be construed as a couple different tactics. It seemed like WWE was moving away from the ink for this match to get real emotions out of TV. But you have to remember that this is still technically within storylines. So when Cody took the mic and started talking about Dusty, its tough to reconcile that Stardust has said that Cody is no more and doesnt exist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj81VYocTVg It also doesnt help that when the time came initially after Dustys death, neither son appeared on TV to soak in the cheers from the crowd. Cody finally resurfaced, but solely as Stardust, and he never acknowledged Dreams passing. Thats fine disappointing, but fine but then to reverse course, you should have a good explanation.
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.
