Any time a professional wrestler gives an interview, it’s hard to tell if they are in or out of character. But when it comes to Cody Rhodes criticizing the involvement of Pat McAfee in the main event storyline for WrestleMania 42, maybe it doesn’t matter.
Rhodes appeared on the SI Media podcast with Jimmy Traina for an in-person interview just days ahead of the biggest WWE show of the year. And maybe it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but it seemed as if Rhodes was shooting from the hip and not in storyline mode as we saw earlier in the day when he smashed the set of The Pat McAfee Show.
Because when it came to Traina’s question about the online rejection of McAfee becoming the main player in his night one title match with Randy Orton, the current WWE champion did not hold back.
“I’ll further that. This is the most ill-received in the history of wrestling. Gobbledy Gooker was one, Shockmaster was up there, but that was kind of funny. This is the entire fandom, your fandom, my fandom, independent wrestling fans, casual fans, cinema fans, every single fan who ever said ‘wrestling’ has received this with ‘huh? what? ok.’ So worst received thing in the history of wrestilng,” Rhodes said.
For the untrained wrestling fan, those two instances that Rhodes mentioned are perhaps the two biggest and most infamous botches in wrestling history. One featured a giant turkey mascot popping out of an egg and the other featured a giant new character stumbling through an exploding wall and then seeing his helmet fall off. That’s not company that anyone involved in the wrestling business wants to be associated with. Ever.
However, he did compliment Pat McAfee, suggesting that the previous comments were out of character and his actual real-life opinion on how badly this all has gone.
“Pat McAfee is a huge star. Pat McAfee is one of the faces, if not the face of ESPN. His College GameDay stuff is legendary. And a great athlete, and he loves wrestling. He’s just trying to help our party out. So I respect him and I respect that. On the other side of it, I am attuned to the online audience, but it’s not just the online audience,” Rhodes remarked.
That is all true. McAfee does bring a ton of casual fans in and he is very popular. But WWE already had him in a perfect role as a hype man, announcer, and part-time wrestler. Asking him to suddenly lead a TKO-inspired nWo takeover of the industry is like asking Rhodes to suddenly start being ESPN’s top college football analyst.
Earlier in the interview, he dived into some of the specific issues with McAfee’s insertion into his program with Orton, specifically around the original promo that McAfee cut after his heel turn that was widely panned for its out of date references.
“He’s standing there doing fart jokes and WrestleMania catchphrases yelling ‘WHAT?!’ at a bunch of kids who don’t even remember ‘WHAT?!’ and he was talking about the Attitude Era, like it was 30 years ago. 30 years ago. I would have been 10. We got them. They had a great run,” Rhodes said.
“We did all this work. WWE is on ESPN now, Netflix, WrestleMania 39 broke all these records, WrestleMania 40 broke those records, WrestleMania 41, at what point do you want to shine a little,” he asked rhetorically.
What Cody Rhodes didn’t say is that WrestleMania 42 is struggling mightily to sell tickets after a record run of business that he has been front and center for as the featured player. It’s one of the reasons why Pat McAfee promoted tickets being sold at 25% off just over a week out from the event even though he’s playing a heel that fans are supposed to hate.
But instead of trusting who has brought them to the dance and led to a modern wrestling boom, WWE instead felt like they had to bring Pat McAfee in to “save the business” in more ways than one. And if this is all a roundabout way to build a new meta WWE vs TKO storyline or to find a way to keep Rhodes’ top good guy act fresh, maybe none of us are seeing the forest for the trees. But fans ultimately vote with their feet and their wallets. And if McAfee’s WrestleMania 42 involvement doesn’t move tickets, maybe that’s the biggest and most important signal of them all.
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