A Pro Wrestling Conversation About...WWE Raw, Part 2
The title of this post, A Pro Wrestling Conversation About…, signifies a new periodic series for The Pro Wrestling Exuberant and something I’ve long wanted to do in the written format, going back to my days in the ‘90s writing for pro wrestling magazines.
The concept is simply that two people discuss in-depth different pro wrestling topics with each other. Wrestlers. Promotions. TV Shows. Current Storylines. Past storylines. Basically, anything pro wrestling related.
I am seeking others to converse with for future installments:
· Fans of professional wrestlers, new and long-term
· Other pro wrestling writers
· Writers who are fans of pro wrestling but have never written about it.
· Writers who are curious about pro wrestling and will watch it for the first time for this series.
If you’re interested in participating, send me a Chat message here on Substack.
Now, here we go with Part 2 of my conversation with , the writer of Sports Passion Project on Substack. Robbie, a football writer, is a highly knowledgeable wrestling fan and does an excellent job explaining the reasoning behind his opinions on various wrestling topics.
If you missed Part 1, here’s the link:
A Pro Wrestling Conversation About...WWE Raw
- Russell Franklin
The Pro Wrestling Exuberant: It’s WrestleMania season, a special time of year for pro wrestling and in WWE it is where the long-term storylines from the prior year reach their conclusions.
The 3-31 episode of Raw was significant in the build to the big WrestleMania match with Cody Rhodes vs John Cena. That episode opened with John Cena. I find this whole Cena heel run very compelling. I remember well the mid-2000s when Cena was booed so heavily as a face.
As a viewer, I wanted to see him go heel back then, just snap from the plethora of animosity of the fans, much of it mean-spirited from the fans too, and unleash all of that frustration on his opponent.
It never happened, as we know.
John Cena smiled through all the boos and kind of playfully shrugged it off back then but there was always some underlying vibe that it bothered the character and perhaps the man.
My most distinct memory of the anti-Cena wave from this era is when he wrestled a match at the old ECW Arena. What a hostile crowd this was, like hostile from the territory era that would turn to riots often. The audience was not split at all like the Raw audiences every week with the dualling “Let’s go Cena” and “Cena sucks” chants.
When Cena threw his shirt into the crowd at the old ECW Arena, doing his standard gimmick, the fan who caught it promptly threw it back. This occurred several times over.
So, his heel run for me now is something that I find satisfying on some level as a long-time wrestling fan. It taps into the past for me.
I can identify with Cena, even as a Cody fan, and I’m fine with that because I find it compelling viewing as a wrestling fan. I want to see this match, and their verbal exchange with each other on the 3-31 Raw only enhanced that. The physicality at the end of the exchange was just a bonus for me.
I found the promo interesting too in how they made references to the present, past and some behind the scenes stuff all in one exchange. Of note for me was Cody talking about being booed in AEW without referencing AEW by name.
I wonder how many fans of WWE, especially those that became wrestling fans in the last few years, would know what he was referring to when he said he was booed at a company he helped build, or have watched AEW if they did get the reference?
What did you think of the opening with them on this show specifically, and what do you think of in general of how this feud is being laid out in the build to WrestleMania?
Sports Passion Project: You beat me back onto the WWE fan train by just a few months. I remember watching the 2024 Royal Rumble, and as a man whose fandom of CM Punk had been my fandom of pro wrestling since 2011, I was extremely disappointed when he did not win, and even more disappointed when I found out he was not going to be wrestling again for half a year afterwards.
To the WWE’s credit, they had done just enough in the two months of runway I’d given them to get me to keep with the show, even though my favorite wrestler was not going to be on it for a while.
Of course, one of the things that captivated me about the show was Cody Rhodes. Although I did not know what ‘finish the story’ meant, as I was not there for the build to WrestleMania 2023 at all, that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to see him finish it, and I cheered as loudly as everybody else when he was the one to finally defeat the undefeatable Roman Reigns.
The problem Cody has had in my eyes for a lot of his reign with the belt has been that he’s been second on the bill a lot of the time, with more people wanting to see what Drew McIntyre and CM Punk were doing for most of the past year than wanting to see what Cody Rhodes was doing. It’s all the same show. I understand that, but for the world champion to be second on the bill is never a good thing.
However, since Hell in a Cell happened, Cody has been getting a lot stronger as a world champion in my opinion, finally getting to be the top of the card, although I’m not sure how we’ve managed to get ourselves into the position we’re in.
The build to Cody vs John Cena begins with The Rock completely retconning everything he and Cody had spent so long building up in the months before last year’s WrestleMania on the debut episode of RAW on Netflix. The Rock does this by coming out and talking nicely about Cody and everything they did together. I hated this, and I was not the only one. What was the point of all that building to a match that was never happening?
This continued in the following weeks, with Rock cutting some really bad promos where he would be good guy and bad guy in the same sentence, concluding with requesting Cody give The Rock ‘his soul.’ I couldn’t have been the only one asking what on Earth that meant, and I also couldn’t have been the only one asking how this was going to end in a wrestling match.
If The Rock was going to be the one to wrestle Cody, he wouldn’t have been so nice to him to begin with, but he also wasn’t affiliated with any wrestlers, so who was going to wrestle Cody?
As we all know, the answer would turn out to be John Cena, who beat Cody down at the end of the Elimination Chamber show, which leads into this program we’re talking about right now.
The WWE have taken a weird, stop-start approach with this. I rewatched every promo in research for writing this, and the thing that WWE weirdly seems to insist on making clear is that this is not a personal issue between John Cena and Cody Rhodes. For instance, in John’s first promo on March 17, take a guess how many words are said about Cody Rhodes.
Five.
When the fans begin literally begging him to talk about Cody with a ‘We want Cody!’ chant, he describes Cody as “your brand-new shiny toy” before immediately going back to talking about how he hates the fans. It was clear he had no interest in talking about Cody Rhodes, and at the same time, the first time Cody gets in the same ring as John Cena, what does he do? Does he try to punch him?
No. He smiles. He milks the crowd, and he talks. About the crowd.
It just took one promo to make clear what’s going on here. Cody Rhodes is not mad at John Cena. John Cena is not mad at Cody Rhodes. John Cena hates the crowd, and thinks they’re leeches. Cody Rhodes loves the crowd and thinks they’re very positive. Why are these two fighting? Why did John Cena attack Cody Rhodes at Elimination Chamber? Both questions remain unaddressed.
Then, we move to March 24, where John Cena has more to say about the fans. He says his goal is to ruin all of wrestling, by finally breaking the Ric Flair record, and refusing to lose it to anybody on the way out.
Side note. This feud has been full of inside comments. Why didn’t John just say this? It’s clearly what he meant, but for some reason he didn’t go so far as saying he’d refuse to drop the belt once he wins it. I’m not sure why this is.
PS. Not a single word is said about Cody Rhodes. At least we know why John Cena wants to fight him now, but why did he attack Cody at Elimination Chamber? The question remains unaddressed. Once again, John is interrupted by Cody. Once again, Cody is not mad at John for openly stating his plan to hold the belt hostage. At least, not mad enough not to milk his entrance for three full minutes before addressing John. He opens with the perfect quote for how this feud has been going:
‘You said you plan to take this belt away from them. Don’t you think you need to take it from me first?’
Exactly! This is what we were all thinking. In 30 minutes of promos over two weeks, John said one sentence about Cody Rhodes, and that one sentence was to make perfectly clear he had no intentions of talking about Cody Rhodes.
Cody does eventually fire up and get angry about John threatening to retire with the belt. However, it takes almost six minutes, and the segment ends with John making perfectly clear that he is not interested enough in Cody Rhodes to even throw the free punch that Cody was offering.
This is not necessarily bad TV. It’s entertaining stuff as Russell said, but I’m not sure if I were the one booking this, that I would’ve have gone so far out of my way to ensure that everybody understands how ambivalent John Cena is about the world champion.
No matter who the world champion was, John would be acting the exact same way. I’m not sure if it was an intentional choice to make Cody an ancillary character thus far, or John Cena going into business for himself, or what’s been happening here, but that is what’s been happening.
Perhaps I’m just a crotchety old man on this, but I miss the days when the wrestling show used to be about wrestlers.
The main event of one night of WrestleMania (the CM Punk three-way) is about the wrestlers. The main event of the other night seems to be entirely focused on John Cena’s personal dislike of the wrestling fans, with Cody being just a means to his end.
This brings us to the 3-31 episode of RAW, where all of this comes to a head.
To begin, I can’t help but notice several times that Cody has no problem at all turning his back on the heel John Cena.
It used to be a golden rule for babyfaces never to turn your back on the heel, because you’re putting lipstick on them. If you turn your back on them, why would they not attack you? It would undermine them if they didn’t. It doesn’t necessarily apply in this case, because Cena clearly doesn’t care about Cody Rhodes at all, but you would still think he’d want to do the most he could to boost his chances of winning at WrestleMania.
Nevertheless, Cody turns his back several times, and John takes no forward step. Yet another example of how this is not a personal issue.
This is a feud about the crowd, which perhaps justifies the UK crowd’s desire to be the show on this night. There is a distinct difference between a crowd enjoying a show and a crowd wanting to be the show, and this UK crowd without question wanted to be the show, more than once being too busy singing to bother reacting to what Cody Rhodes had just said.
When the crowd is not too busy talking over the man they ostensibly came to listen to, Cody asks John Cena the question I’ve been asking for several paragraphs now. Why are we doing all this?
This is where we get to the AEW reference.
I think WWE were crossing their fingers and praying that nobody understood what Cody meant when he discussed being booed in AEW, because why was Cody booed in AEW? He was too carefully manicured, and visually inauthentic. Nobody knew who the real Cody Rhodes was, but everybody knew he was an extremely egotistical person.
Sound familiar?
In my opinion, either John himself or whoever told him to say all this is flying really close to the sun here. To me, this is sort of like the old parable of never calling an old wrestler old, because if you bring up the fact that Damian Priest is 42 years old, people will notice. If you just don’t bring it up, people will go along thinking that he’s much younger than he is.
Cody Rhodes is a very carefully manicured, made for TV image, and ever since he left WWE the first time, he always has been. There’s nothing authentic about him. Deep in our hearts we all know this. Who is the real Cody Rhodes? You and I have no idea. All we see are the carefully rehearsed TV promos, and the admittedly very good wrestling matches.
This is why Cody was so reviled in AEW. Their fanbase generally skews indie and are not such big fans of this carefully rehearsed corporate image stuff. WWE fans are a more corporate crowd, and are more accepting of things like this, but if WWE intends to keep Cody as a babyface, I wouldn’t make a habit of bringing this all up. It won’t take too many times before people really begin to notice, because most everything John Cena said is true.
What John Cena dislikes about Cody Rhodes is the same thing all wrestling fans disliked about Cody Rhodes for years. It gets so bad that when Cena again reiterates that he’s going to retire with the belt, this time the crowd cheers, and chants for John. Quite frankly, I’m not sure that’s what they were going for. I feel like they need to back off this angle ASAP, and to his credit, as soon as John hears that cheer, he never goes back to talking about Cody’s inauthenticity.
Cody never addresses it either, because there’s nothing he can say without straight up lying to the audience. He strategically says he’s not a company creation, which is true. He was manicured and corporate before he ever got to WWE, but he never once claims not to be manicured, rehearsed, and corporate. He works around it to get a decent comeback in and even finishes it with mentioning The Rock.
Right. Remember that The Rock was supposed to be a part of this? Where’s he been?
I feel like this promo is going to be interpreted differently by those who understand Cody’s AEW story, and those who don’t. Those who understand that Cody insisted on being this corporate champion, even before he was the corporate champion, will understand that John Cena is 95% correct in what he’s said here.
In my opinion, this is why John got cheered for saying it. Those who don’t understand the Cody in AEW story will likely take his vehement denial of being a company creation at face value and believe that John is spewing nonsense.
As somebody who does understand what happened with Cody in AEW, this promo felt like a jobber squash. Cody was routinely talked over by the audience who claimed to be on his side, and he had nothing to come back with when his opponent pointed out his biggest flaw.
He got a few sick burns on John (‘The fans have never chanted at me ‘you can’t wrestle’), but in terms of the substantive content of the promo, John was putting the boots to him. It was done in a way that likely shouldn’t be allowed to happen again, lest John Cena become the babyface here, which was already beginning to happen midway through this promo.
This one-sided beatdown in the verbal exchange meant that Cody had to be the victor in the physicality. If he’d got beaten down verbally and physically, he would’ve just been a bug on the windshield, and the idea that this guy would actually be able to beat John at WrestleMania would begin to feel unrealistic.
I’m happy that Cody was able to leave John laying at the end of this, although I’m still not sure that Cody’s tenuous status as John’s equal allows any wiggle room for John to get any kind of rebuttal.
The Pro Wrestling Exuberant: I concur with your belief that the world title feud should always be presented as the first on the bill on any wrestling show. Indeed, everything should be crafted to make that the main event focus and the world title the most important thing and something every wrestler in theory should aspire to obtain.
To that end, I think it's vitally important that every wrestler who is presented as a viable challenger is portrayed as striving to "win" in each and every match.
There should be a sense of urgency and determination in both verbal and physical action. They must convey it in both their actions and words. Pro wrestling in this way should be just as any sport in that you expect and believe every athlete on the playing field wants to be the best and win. Nobody should appear to be competing with the idea of achieving anything less, no matter whether the goal itself does not seem very realistic to the viewer. The effort given should imply otherwise. Always.
What Cody "finishing his story" really was about in essence was a quest to win a world championship.
His striving and the continual emphasis on wanting to achieve that lofty goal I think is what resonated with viewers en masse. A portion of the WWE audience at the time saw Cody with fresh eyes, likely not having been wrestling fans during his previous WWE run and did not watch AEW and know him from there either.
So, it was the chase for the world title and the representation of what the world title is that helped get him over. I wrote about this a little in one of my earliest posts, Sting's Big Win. In that post, I compared Cody's run to and winning of the world title to Sting's run beginning in the late '80s and cumulating with his first world title win when he beat Ric Flair in 1990. I think there were a lot of similarities in both storylines and why they both resonated with fans, one key being a long, well-crafted build to the eventual first world title win.
Related to your comments that you felt many have had about Cody's actual world title reign being overshadowed by other feuds, specifically CM Punk and Drew McIntyre's extended feud, the challenger for a world champion is a vital element.
That is, a compelling foe and storyline is needed, someone who creates an urgency for the viewer to see them complete for the title.
This is not meant to be a knock on any of Cody's challengers, but the issue here in this case is just how compelling CM Punk and Drew McIntyre were together. The grittiness and realism of their interactions compelled me as a viewer, and it went to a whole level beyond just the chemistry they had in the actual match. I felt both were masterful in conveying emotions in the ring in the non-wrestling segments when they weren't even talking. It was the facial expressions and body language from both that drew me in much deeper than any other feud I've seen in recent memory.
You and I could have a whole other conversation here just about CM Punk. Your comments resonate with me about him. I'm a long-time proponent of his mic and ring work.
I view him only through the view of my own fan eyes, not what is written about him online, and he has connected with me ever since his Pipe Bomb speech, one of my favorite moments in pro wrestling in any decade.
I've always felt some element of realism in his words when he speaks, something personalized about his words, and I have also enjoyed his matches. I remember his AEW run for some outstanding matches with newer(ish) talent, matches that I thought elevated his already talented opponents. In particular I really liked his matches with Powerhouse Hobbs and Darby Allin.
You brought up a lot of interesting points about the Cena-Cody dynamic. I think all feuds need to have a personal element driving it, because heated, compelling pro wrestling is built on grudges. With believable action to support it.
Is Cena the perfect opponent for the world title holder in 2025 at the biggest show of the year? Is WWE leaning too hard into nostalgia to a fanbase that watched the show two decades ago? What percentage of the audience falls into the demographic, like me, who watched Cena week-to-week in his prime? I think those are valid questions. I care about this conflict largely because of the past, and it's the past of the challenger. I wanted to see Cena go heel 20 years ago, snap and turn bitter on the audience that booed him so strongly.
Your comments got me thinking that it is nostalgia that is drawing me in so far and making me care on a high level. I'll have to see if I still care at the same level, or more, or less, when the bell rings for the WrestleMania match between them.
With John Cena here, the main point seems to be about a change of attitude towards the fans.
It's pent-up frustration and resentment over decades, recalling all those "Cena sucks" chants on live TV and PPVs two decades ago, when everything he did and said was always designed to elicit universal cheers.
He smiled throughout, shrugged his shoulders, and acknowledged that hate, all the while giving off the vibe it did not bother him at the end of the day. But it did. How could it not? I can't emphasize enough how much he was disliked by a large segment of the audience for being, well, just being himself/playing his role. It's my single most lasting memory of mid-2000s pro wrestling,
So, I think that's a very insightful comment you made about how John Cena would be acting exactly the same way here no matter who was the champion, ultra beloved champion or not. That's really the key here. That's the personal issue here, and it's more of an intrapersonal issue, not connected to the opposing party like say how MJF talked about how William Regal handled him as a prospect in that AEW storyline awhile back.
It is much lesser part Cena simply seeing Rhodes as beneath him because he was at a lower level when they both were on the scene at the same time during a prior WWE run.
That's it so far.
It's a light step, but it's enough for me so far because it draws on jealousy and bitterness, so while it may not be a personal issue between two people it's an intrapersonal issue for Cena. A segment of the audience should be able to relate. Would I feel this way if I had not watched Cena in his prime? Likely not.
You made a very valid point too about the ending on the 3-31 Raw where Rhodes laid out Cena.
If there were to be any physicality here, the necessary end was Rhodes standing over Cena. To leave Cody laying in a post verbal exchange that was anything but an outright and impactful-looking sneak attack, would simply have not served any purpose beyond the champion looking significantly weaker than an opponent. Not vulnerable. Just weak. The champion can have the odds against him in a lead-up but cannot be made to look too weak and too much of an underdog in this type of situation. It's wrestling 101.
***
In Part 3, Russell and Robbie discuss Gunther, the other WWE champion, and his WrestleMania match with Jey Uso, and the building of this feud on Raw.
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