8 Radical Ideas To Save Cody Rhodes
The dream isn't dead: time for some smoke and mirrors.
Out of all the WWE performers who I've ever written Radical Ideas To Save... articles on, Cody Rhodes is probably the one that least needs actually 'saving'.
Cody Rhodes was always far more over with the crowd than WWE want to admit, and Stardust’s relative unpopularity is only because audiences haven't had a chance to click with him.
However, people tend to forget that babyface hero Cody Rhodes isn’t a real person: he’s a role that Cody Runnels used to play, just as 'Dashing' Cody Rhodes was, just as the sinister masked Rhodes was, just as cat-impersonating supervillain Stardust is now.
Cody Runnels, on the other hand, is the most old school wrestler on the current roster. Knee-deep in wrestling since he was a kid, Runnels was famously not smartened up by his legendary dad until he was fourteen.
He tells stories about how he'd never hang out backstage when he went to the matches, preferring to sneak in and hope that no one knew whose son he was, so that he could just watch the show as a fan.
This is a man so committed that he's become notorious for insisting on a complete separation between himself and Stardust, with both 'sides' refusing to admit that they're the same person.
Cody Rhodes has been off WWE programming for nearly two years, and Stardust is jobbing to the midcard. Is this really the best use of Cody Runnels’ talents?
Here’s eight radical ideas to change all of that...
8. A Change Of Focus
In what appeared to be an out-of-character interview a couple of years ago, Cody insisted that his was a fair industry:
"I have this attitude of the business that very few people have: I really do think the business is more fair than people give it credit. I think the guys who work harder end up rising to the top, and it's not right away, but they end up getting there…
"I’m obsessed with my industry and I don’t treat it like a job, so very much at the end of the day, the goals are very simple, it’s the WWE championship or the World Heavyweight championship and if it’s just one championship, then it’s that. It’s that position…
"And then there’s the main event with Randy Orton and John Cena. I watch those guys and as much as respect and as many questions as I’ll ask them, I’m also sitting there telling myself, ‘I want your spot because I want to do it better.’ And I hope I know how to do it better when I get there. And I mean that with utmost respect. I don’t mean it with any negativity or negative connotation. That for me is the end game…
"I would be so disappointed with myself if I looked up on my wall after my career and I didn’t see a picture of me holding the WWE Title. It would be a failure and I don’t want that." - Kingston Whig-Standard, December 2013
Fast forward two and a half years, and that's what Cody Runnels is looking at unless something radically changes. He suggested recently on Twitter that he doesn't see himself as an active wrestler past forty years old.
Well, that means he's halfway through his career now, yet he's as far away from the main event now as he was when he debuted in WWE in July 2007.
He's been running the Stardust gimmick for nearly two years now, which would have a natural ceiling to it even the character wasn't being used as glorified enhancement talent (which he is).
Worse, to my knowledge Runnels has never been a contender for a world title singles run under any gimmick, even in a nothing television match.
Runnels has a decade's worth of form for working his !*$% off in every crappy story he's been asked to tell. He got a threadbare moustache over, and made a legitimate broken nose transform his narcissistic 'Dashing' Cody Rhodes heel into a warped, sinister, masked villain.
He's one of the better Intercontinental Champions of the last two decades, with the 9th longest reign of all time at 236 days: and regardless of what you think of the Stardust character, no one can deny that Runnels has poured a huge amount of effort and creativity into the role.
When given any job to do, Cody Runnels does it without question and does it better than everyone else. It might be time for him to start applying that work ethic into ambition, because as good as it is for the ego to be the utility player with a gift for turning chicken sh*t into chicken salad, it's better to be the heavyweight champion of the damn world.