RADICAN’S TAKE: Cody Rhodes’s creative and booking post-WrestleMania feels more mid-card than main event

WWE Undisputed Champion Cody Rhodes rolled up Gunther and Sami Zayn quickly counted to three after kicking his hands off the ropes to retain his title last night on Smackdown. Now, this wasn’t just any slot on Smackdown it was right at the start of the show in the “commercial free” portion of the show.

WWE didn’t exactly pull a Lucy on fans by having a match go short with a lame finish, but my eyes glazed over when Zayn’s hand hit the mat for the third and final time. Yes, Gunther had powerbombed Zayn earlier in the match and another ref had come down to the ring, but there was too much going on for the match itself to mean anything other than it was going to lead to another match.

The match was then restarted with a new ref. Zayn ended up going to the ring and blasting Gunther with a Helluva Kick. He then attacked both men after the match was ruled a DQ. WWE Smackdown GM Nick Aldis made it official later in the show that Rhodes would defend his title against Zayn and Gunther at Night of Champions next week.

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WWE hasn’t done an effective job of pushing Cody overall as a top act, especially recently. Upper management has messed with his creative plans for WrestleMania several years in a row now. As a champion and top act, WWE management and creative have let Cody down. He hasn’t had many compelling feuds, he also hasn’t had a feud that has felt worthy of headlining a PLE since he captured the title at WrestleMania 42 in April.

Somehow Rhodes has traveled that creative rocky road without having the majority of fans turn on him. We could break down all of the creative ups and downs Rhodes has had to endure, especially during WrestleMania season, but let’s take a look at what Rhodes has had to deal with lately.

Rhodes teased a match against C.M. Punk at the Raw after WrestleMania, but nothing has come of that since with Punk disappearing from TV. Rhodes began feuding with Gunther in May when Gunther attacked him by surprise choked him out on Smackdown. The two then went on to wrestle for the WWE Undisputed Championship in the opening match at the Clash in Italy PLE on May 31. That match saw Rhodes get the win, but it came with a disputed finish as Gunther had his foot under the ropes when he was pinned and the ref didn’t see it.

Getting from one match to the next with an unsatisfactory finish is pretty common in WWE booking, but usually top guys like Rhodes aren’t booked with such an uninspiring set of circumstances to navigate. WWE World Champion Roman Reigns has had to shoulder his fair share of questionable booking decisions as well recently, but it doesn’t seem nearly as uninspired as what WWE creative has done with Rhodes post-WrestleMania.

Rhodes’s creative has felt like it matters less than Reigns’s even if Reign’s creative has also left something to be desired. Reign’s storylines have been pushed front and center on TV and his feud with Jakob Fatu post-WrestleMania was positioned as being important. They had a competitive match at Backlash that resulted in a Tribal Combat rematch at Clash in Italy. The feud didn’t rely on silly mid-card booking tropes to progress from one match to the next.

Rhodes’s storylines haven’t felt as important as Roman Reigns since WrestleMania. Cody Rhodes vs. Gunther would be compelling, but Gunther seemed to get lost in the mix during WrestleMania season and he lost steam coming off retiring John Cena. Gunther beat Seth Rollins in a high profile match at WrestleMania 42, but the win came thanks to interference from Bron Breakker, who laid out Rollins with a big spear.

There’s been so many moving parts around Cody that WWE never got around to making the feud between him and Gunther feel like a main event feud. Gunther began feuding with Rhodes after a tainted WrestleMania win over Rollins. Cody has also been dealing with a passive aggressive Sami Zayn behind the scenes as well. Zayn has been acting like a jerk and saying Cody is treated like the golden boy in WWE while calling himself the last real good guy in wrestling.

Rhode’s creative has felt like mid-card booking material for the most part lately. It’s hard to take Rhodes’s current storyline seriously because so little effort has been put into making it feel important. With Gunther losing steam in recent months and Zayn doing a lot of comedy driven material backstage and during his feud with Trick Williams, it feels like Rhodes’s storylines just don’t carry the gravitas a WWE main event storyline should in order to draw interest from fans.

To compound those things the matches between Gunther and Rhodes have been treated like mid-card TV fodder as opposed to a series of matches between two of the top guys in WWE to determine who the better man is. I’m not even sure what the point of the three-way match between Rhodes, Zayn, and Gunther is other than to see if one of them can escape this storyline and do a hard reset on the WWE Undisputed title picture.

s(Sean Radican has been Pro Wrestling Torch for over 22 years. He has covered the independents, ROH, and NJPW in-depth over the years in addition to also watching all the major promotions in the U.S. PWTorch VIP members get access to his weekly Radican Worlwide podcast looking at a variety of news topics from the past week and then an in-depth Go-Home segment with a guest on a big topic of the week. You can contact him at pwtorchsean@gmail.com. You can follow him on X @SR_Torch and on Bluesky @SeanRadican.)