Just What IS Cody Rhodes' WWE Story Anyway?!
Because 10,000 read significantly better than even 9,000, which would have been an incredible achievement. “10,000” felt like minimum for a big-time wrestling show - a romantic number, a number that acted as incontrovertible shorthand proof that non-WWE wrestling could be a viable concern.
The idea of a mainstream competitor was a remote possibility. For as long as cable TV wrestling had existed, the advertising industry had mocked it. That’s because, as you will be acutely aware, everybody in your life who doesn’t like wrestling simply cannot comprehend that you like it. Even those who don’t take the piss are simply in disbelief at your childish, fake, inexplicable hobby. Advertisers think you’re a dope - a poor dope who can’t afford what they’re selling to you - but then, so do doctors, accountants, locksmiths, office managers, retail assistants, travel consultants…
Wrestling’s primary obstacle has always been wrestling itself.
The shadowy formation of All Elite Wrestling actually predated All In, and it was Matt Jackson who first entertained the overtures made by the rich but unproven Tony Khan and his fanciful ‘World’s Best Wrestling’ project. The Elite’s brand was so strong that Khan had to successfully counter what was, at the time, an unprecedented WWE offer. Two years on from Cody’s WWE departure, everything had changed. Triple H offered Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks a main event salary, to bypass NXT entirely, and - this was the unprecedented bit - a no-catch clause in which, were they not happy with their creative after three months, they could leave. No questions asked. This had never been extended to anybody, and it’s an amusing self-own that Paul Levesque felt he had to insert this clause. By 2018, WWE was so atrocious that, by the end of the year, they had to apologise for it. This awful, antagonistic run of creative further opened up the market for All Elite Wrestling to strike the elusive - and virtually impossible - TV deal.
But it was All In - as uneven as it was, looking back - that acted as proof of concept for AEW, if it was not exactly a pilot. It was Cody’s baby - he’d actually spoken of running a major arena show before Meltzer rubbished the idea - and he stole it.
Powered by Being The Elite, All In laid bare that the WWE creative writers Cody had scorched on the way out were redundant. Unnecessary. Much of the storyline material that built towards All In has dated, and badly - one of the top matches was built around mocking the long-defunct WWE brand 205 Live, another was a story of sexual inadequacy featuring the disgraced Joey Ryan - but it captured the zeitgeist of the time. Cody was always a man out of time, and it’s his match that has truly stood its test. Kenny Omega Vs. Penta El Zero Miedo was an exhilarating and terrifying exhibition of movez-based violence, but it was below his best 2018 efforts. The Young Bucks and Kota Ibushi Vs. Rey Mysterio, Fénix and Bandido was state-of-the-art high-flying, a total rush, but it was truncated by Marty Scurll Vs. Kazuchika Okada, a match that both went too long and that nobody will remember fondly for reasons beyond the artistic.
Cody Vs. Nick Aldis was the match with which Cody discovered himself. He played the hero vying for what quite frankly was a joke of a title, one that was thrown to the ground by Shane Douglas as rubbish a quarter of a decade earlier and, beyond some rare magic in TNA, had stayed in the bin ever since. On the night, Cody elevated it. He elevated, of all things, the NWA World title in front of 10,451 fans, the most gathered at a US show not promoted by WWE since WCW died, in a very good match worked in an absorbing, timeless rhythm. Cody claimed in his departure letter to WWE in 2016 that he had specialised in turning chicken sh*t into chicken salad. Few believed him. He undeniably did that at All In.
September 1, 2018 was the night on which Cody Rhodes showed WWE that they had in fact missed something special by overlooking him. At a Starrcast panel preceding the event, Cody delighted fans with the famous “That referee was trying to f*ck on me!” story about Ted DiBiase, Jr. botching the finish of the “worst match” he’d ever been a part of. Cody with his wit and his gregarious ability to charm a room was the ideal figurehead of a revolution. With his ritual (and now ironic) take-downs of WWE, he was the partisan leader of the alternative party. The disillusioned fans who had drifted away from WWE - or who had for all intents and purposes been told to f*ck off by WWE - fell for his cutting jibes.
It was no surprise, then, that when AEW eventually formed, he was the fan’s hero - despite unveiling his masterpiece in the situational heel role at the inaugural Double Or Nothing. He bloodied Dustin Rhodes in Las Vegas to the extent that the canvas resembled the floor of an abattoir - a great aesthetic that both paid off the first great unscripted AEW promo and set the promotion apart, and how, from WWE. The match was at once scary - Dustin looked like he was losing far too much blood at an alarming rate - and, when Dustin shot his shoulder up from that when trapped in the figure-four, life-affirming. When Dustin whipped Cody’s bare arse cheeks in revenge for his condescending behaviour throughout, the fans completely lost it. This timeless blood-soaked drama reached stratospheric levels of emotion and gore. Wrestling was back. Cody again stole the show.
Unscripted promos, a waterfall of blood, exquisite use of the space between moves, old-fashioned slapstick comedy, fans legitimately crying in the stands: it took Cody one match to deliver what had been missing from mainstream wrestling in decades. He will leave the business infinitely better than he found it.
CONT'D...