This weekend made it a delight to be a professional wrestling fan. While I can’t afford the $140 pricetag on the Collective PPV package, it was a treat to watch the gifs and tweets and video clips roll in from different sources. In a way, I was able to see some of the incredible indie wrestling in Dallas but since I have a Peacock login (from my mom, yes I’m 36) watching Wrestlemania was free. Hitting what is undoubtedly rock bottom, I watched it.
Anything anybody writes about Wrestlemania this year should first mention and praise to the utmost the Bianca vs. Becky feud and payoff. Inexplicably, I wept during the pre-match video package because the story is so rich and these women are the perfect choice to portray it. Becky Lynch thought that she was wrestling for the fans, for the adulation of the crowd believing that their love and the title were inseparable. When she beat Bianca and humiliated her she lost that prize and became unhinged as she told herself that just being champion was all she needed. Maybe along the way she started to realize she did indeed believe all she cared about was the belt and it was worth any cost. I don’t think it’s unintentional that Becky was pristine and polished when she squashed Bianca and I don’t think it’s unintentional she is craven, cold and shorn when Bianca takes it back. Keeping Bianca at bay has taken everything Becky has.
Bianca is a humble and hard worker, easy to admire and adore while she owns her incredible abilities. Her spirit and belief in herself has propelled her to the top of this company. Her “failure” in the ring with Becky will now only serve as the devastatingly stark beginning of her story, making its culmination all the more dizzyingly exhilarating. Placing such a striking loss alongside her indomitable will to be the best reminds us all of what it takes to thrive in our world, especially now. Bianca’s portrayal of this unquenchable drive reminds us that it is this ability to transcend our physical obstacles that makes us human. And damn it, we just needed a win.
Starting off the match with the same sequence and then displaying how much Bianca has learned since then was genius. Every movement in that match had a purpose and a meaning. For a company with a history of cutting women’s time and cutting women’s matches, period, Bianca and Becky showed that WWE’s women’s division rarely misses in their execution of creative, no matter how poor that creative may be. Fortunately B. Vs. B blessed us with an all time classic. I remain a sucker for that thing where one person wraps their entire body around their opponent’s arm and their opponent lifts them like some kind of mother possum. Additionally it would be incredible if someday Miro returned to manage Becky and Bianca as a tag team calling them The Best Man.
Circumstantially, which is the most neutral adverb I can think of to describe the situation, Cody Rhodes’ return to WWE also occurred. In my quest to become a better person I’m trying to rise above my own petty feelings of betrayal and see things for what they objectively are. Cody’s employment ended at AEW for reasons that are being highly speculated upon and now he works at WWE. WWE employs sexual predators, traffics in producing propaganda for the Saudi government, fires talent en masse during a recession and plague while denying queer people exist at all in kayfabe unless they’re mocking us. Damn, there are those “betrayed” feelings coming through. WWE has business practices which I find morally objectionable. Quite.
Do I really think a professional wrestler has an obligation to me to stay employed at a company where he and his family feel he isn’t getting the most out of his time in this industry? Without disrespect to anybody, I don’t even particularly like Cody Rhodes. I know I’m not qualified to talk about his in-ring ability but his character just doesn’t appeal to me. Unfortunately for him, I think there was a period in AEW where it was his goal to appeal to audience members like me but his own shallow understanding of the values we wanted him to portray caused him to fall summarily short of this goal.
Sadly, if Cody Rhodes is supposed to embody any essence of “America”, he does an excellent job of embodying the white milquetoast reformist response to white supremacy by using the issue to glorify himself and his own moral righteousness. Yes, I’m talking about the Fixing Racism promo. Talking over a Black man about racism on national television, a Black man who has stood up for his queer sister in the face of death threats, is the last thing somebody like Cody Rhodes should be doing. No, you don’t have credibility on this subject because you married a Black woman. Where is her promo about her own experiences, her own life? Why doesn’t she get to be “vulnerable” and cry onscreen? No, you don’t have credibility on this subject because you are having a child with her. Ideally you are a platform and a resource for Black people and neither of those things are in the spotlight. I actually really love his public speaking style, I don’t have a lot of criticisms in that area but the conception of his response to the rising public awareness of white supremacy in the United States was very poor and, again, shallow.
For me, that’s where he lost me. I didn’t feel any amount of hatred towards him while he was in AEW. What I felt was a bit like pity with a touch of intrigue at the meta faceheel shit he was doing. What is a heel? Who defines who the heel is – the booker or the audience? To me it harkened back to those famous moments when performers have realized that the crowd has an entirely different idea of where a match is going. The greatest use that and let it energize them to legendary effect. By remaining a face he was becoming a heel in his refusal to submit to his fans’ will. Or perhaps that is me giving him too much credit creatively. If he ever ultimately says that he orchestrated his career move to WWE to become the biggest heel he ever possibly could to AEW fans like me I will be delighted.
But when Cody describes his meeting with Vince and Wrestling Daddy’s behavior, I see something familiar. Vince’s calm acceptance of the wronged party’s return, which might make them question how bad things ever were to begin with, might be familiar to some of us. Haven’t you and I both seen a loved one go back into a toxic environment and do the same thing? “Everything’s fine now, really. He’s different.” If this is how Vince treats a man who has unsuccessfully tried to drum up ratings by trash talking him, he must be even kinder to his loyal employees? What better way to redeem your image as an employer than to show people one of your biggest critics happy to be working for you once again?
The IWC has this conception of WWE as an almost Machiavellian corporate machine that exploits their workers and demands they project a certain public image to the point that we all wait for the juicy details to drop every time a mass release is announced. Being on a show like Rhodes to the Top is a kind of exposure and training in that PR work. AEW seems to have a slightly more relaxed policy on talent speaking their mind, albeit with glaring and tragic exceptions like Lio Rush.
If this is the environment he’s re-entering do we really think he’s speaking freely in these interviews? Why would he speak ill of AEW and play into the idea that they are a legitimate competitor instead of what WWE would like them to be – an indie-adjacent stepping stone to employment with WWE. (That’s what we all think is going to happen with MJF, right?) This is the honeymoon phase, whether it’s going to lead to a genuinely happy marriage or one of continued exploitation and disappointment.
Are we surprised to hear their conversation centered around fatherhood – Cody’s most poignant connection to Vince? Now Cody is a father, too, and he has already said that he holds himself up to the high standard Dusty set for the job. Now Cody, Vince and Dusty all share fatherhood in common. It isn’t surprising to me that they didn’t discuss tawdry things like compensation. The rich tend to pay lawyers to do their fighting for them, something Cody Rhodes knows all about.
When somebody decides they want to go back to work for the guy who sued him for using his family name? What do you say to someone who is selling the Rhodes legacy back to that same company? This time I hope Brandi got him sorted from a business perspective. It is at least a comfort that Cody seems to own the American Nightmare concept and character as we are seeing it recreated exactly in WWE, something Vince would never do if AEW owned it.
It just reminds me of some people I have seen who double down on the past, on the comfort of checking out emotionally to submit to continued pain, on telling themselves honoring everything they have worked for means going back to the devil they know. It reminds me of those who will not change, no matter how happy it will make them.
Like Becky, will Cody give everything to reach where his father never tread? Will he ever stop to question this duty to his family name and how he fulfills it? Is this belt worth what he is paying for it in his father’s stead? When and if he finally holds it, will it feel the same as if his father had held it? Or will he realize that his father’s achievements ended when his life did and everything that Cody has done is his own legacy, not Dusty’s? When will he realize that the love of the crowd and victory in his sport aren’t inseparable? When will he realize he cannot make the fans love him on virtue of his greatness alone?
My two cents is that the decision to let Cody go will be a defining one for Tony Khan as a GM. To me it would send a message to the rest of my talent that it doesn’t matter what pedigree you think you have, if you aren’t an asset to the company, someone like Sammy and his YouTube views will take your spot. We have CM Punk, Sting, Bryan Danielson, FTR, the Lucha Bros, Samoa Joe, Adam Cole – we’ll be fine. What is our biggest criticism of creative and management at WWE? They make ridiculous, almost sadistic, booking decisions to inspire rage and passion in their fans to keep them engaged. The Bianca versus Becky payoff that we got is the exception to long term WWE booking, not the rule. We hate that they make booking decisions based on internal preferences rather than who fans love. Bryan Danielson, anybody?
By letting Cody go Tony Khan refused to do either of those things. If AEW truly booked talent based on their internal position Cody would still be in the ring every week putting us through another painfully earnest promo or, worse yet, exposing Brandi to the racist and misogynist ravages of old white men in the name of building her “credibility”. (Literally shaking my head and rolling my eyes while I type that.) Cody’s insistence on retaining booking powers that have driven quarter hour segments into the ground suggests to me he is a good long term fit for WWE. The two styles work great for the companies that employ them and for where the companies are in their life cycle. Only time will tell if ultimately a billionaire like Tony Khan will start relying on marketing focus groups to move merch instead of pro-wrestling reddits.
So, no, I don’t hate Cody for getting a new job. Truthfully I think it works out best for everybody. It was obvious to me that Cody wasn’t who he wanted to be in AEW. The fans had a role carved out for him in our heads but I don’t think it’s the role he wanted to or even could play. He needs to be the redeemed prodigal son, held pure and blameless for all to see. His inability to change defines him but I am not sure he is aware of how much. AEW fans prefer crimson masks, which look ridiculous on Cody, sarcasm and indie wrestlers who got famous filming comedy in their basements. The crown prince of one of wrestling’s royal families, someone with every door opened to them, who couldn’t get themselves over in a company where they had complete creative control doesn’t impress us.
Queer Pandemic 