Cody Rhodes Needs To Become WWE Champion Sooner Than Later

‘The American Nightmare’ Cody Rhodes is currently the most talked about performer in all of pro wrestling, following his return to WWE at WrestleMania 38 to face Seth Rollins. Rumours of Cody’s involvement with WrestleMania spread like wildfire after his contract expired with AEW and negotiations with Tony Khan fell through. According to sources close to Rhodes, he claimed that it wasn’t due to the lack of creative control, but because he wanted to wrestle more, which is precisely what he’s going to be doing now back on the RAW roster.

Cody made his intentions very clear on the RAW after WrestleMania, and that’s to capture the one championship that’s eluded him and his family for generations, the WWE Championship. Currently unified by the dominant ‘Tribal Chief’ Roman Reigns, Cody has quite the task ahead of him if he wants to add the biggest trophy in the business to his family’s trophy case. It’s hard to argue that Rhodes has been made to look like one of the biggest superstars of our time in such a short space of time, and following that promo, wrestling fans are more than behind him to become the next babyface champion.

However, if WWE want to reap the benefits of all this momentum, they need to push Cody to that level sooner rather than later. Like most other returning stars, the post-comeback momentum has a very limited shelf life. Let’s take a look back at two prominent examples from the past few years, the first of which being the more-recent return of CM Punk in All Elite Wrestling.

Punk returned to massive fanfare, making for one of the most emotional return promos of all time, and the greatest moment of 2021. Nothing can take that away from both Punk himself and the masterminds behind bringing him into the company. However, the buzz surrounding the former World Champion fizzled out quite quickly after his debut match against Darby Allin and subsequent feuds with the likes of Eddie Kingston and MJF. Now that Punk is set for his first run at the AEW Championship, fans are finding it more difficult to become invested in his work. He’s now simply just another guy on their roster, albeit one with a tonne of credibility. Not that this means that he shouldn’t win the AEW Championship, and I imagine fans will still serenade us with a rendition of Cult of Personality when he arrives for the title fight, but it just wouldn’t be the same sort of energy as if it took place shortly after his initial return.

The same goes for the Hardy Boyz and their triumphant return to WWE back in 2017. Their headline-breaking return at WrestleMania 33 was a defining moment of that year, much like CM Punk’s in 2021, and quite honestly dethroned Undertaker’s faux-retirement as the highlight of the show. The brothers instantly captured the RAW Tag Team Championships in the fatal-4-way ladder match and quickly sunk into the role of being the perennial curtain-jerkers on live events. This was fine for their first show back, capitalising on all that momentum they’d generated from their run on the indies as ‘The Broken Hardys’.

It was a great moment and absolutely had to end with them winning the championships, so good job, WWE. But what followed was just a generic title run with a limp feud against The Bar, even if they did have some stellar tag matches throughout. The fact that WWE didn’t jump into the Broken Universe as soon as they signed the Hardys was a huge mistake, and by the time Matt Hardy did come around to debuting his cosmic character, fans had lost interest. Whereas if they pulled the trigger on ‘Woken’ Matt and Brother Nero as soon as they walked through that curtain on the RAW after ‘Mania, they could have easily gone from being token tag team to World Championship contenders.

This same sentiment applies to Cody Rhodes. With all this buzz and chatter surrounding ‘The American Nightmare’ and his plight to score the Rhodes’ first World Championship, this needs to be the central storyline running through WWE programming while the iron is hot. Have this feud booked for WrestleMania: Backlash’s main-event and give Cody a reason to appear on both RAW and SmackDown to verbally-spar with Roman Reigns in the build towards the show.

Cody’s return was undoubtedly the biggest ‘WrestleMania moment’ of this year’s two-night event, by honing in on that and keeping it as the most relevant thing in wrestling today, they’ll be able to maintain that surge of popularity that they’ve managed to enjoy since leaving Dallas. Cody Rhodes may not be everyone’s favourite wrestler, but he could definitely be the one to regain some of WWE’s lost magic by putting together one of the most intriguing feuds on the card for the next pay-per-view.

Alternatively, Cody Rhodes’ championship win could be held off until SummerSlam, the second biggest show after WrestleMania. Naturally, WWE want to keep the bigger, marquee feuds for those sort of events, but I highly doubt that WWE could keep Cody Rhodes interesting for that long. Of course, they could always throw a mid-card title his way, or even the MITB briefcase, but is that beneath him at this point? Shouldn’t it be that ‘The Grandson of a Plumber’ is immediately pushed into that major championship scene after besting ‘The Visionary’ on the grandest stage? Shouldn’t Cody go straight for Roman Reigns, considering he’s sent bigger shockwaves throughout the industry than any other wrestler on the roster?

I’m sure there’ll always be detractors to whichever route WWE choose to go down with Cody Rhodes, but personally, I struggle to care about ‘The American Nightmare’ at the best of times, but right now I’m so ready to see him step into the ring with a white-hot Roman Reigns. This feud could easily become the golden thread that runs throughout 2022, leading to SummerSlam and maybe even a match at next year’s WrestleMania, but for that to be as big as it deserves to be, they need to get it started as soon as they possibly can. Otherwise, Cody just becomes another guy on the roster, just with an abysmal neck tattoo.

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