Cody Rhodes has been the face of WWE since capturing the promotion’s top championship on April 7, 2024. (Andrew Timms/WWE via Getty Images)
(WWE via Getty Images)
Happy anniversary, Cody Rhodes. The WWE’s current Universal Champion has now officially hit one year in his title reign. Yes, it’s been exactly 365 days since that WrestleMania finale, in which a procession of legendary babyfaces turned up in Philadelphia to help the good guy beat The Bloodline and win the title that forever eluded his father.
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We all know the consensus on Rhodes’s title win: It’s rightly regarded as a stone-cold classic (and will no doubt be in the top 10 of the WWE’s current countdown of the best WrestleMania moments on YouTube). But how has Rhodes fared as champion in the time since?
In truth, maintaining the insane momentum Rhodes took out of WrestleMania 41 was always going to be a challenge. As friend of Uncrowned Marc Raimondi explained on “The Ariel Helwani Show” in March, the currency of the babyface is always in the chase — and Rhodes was the textbook example of that phenomenon.
We all remember how we felt after “The American Nightmare” fell short in Hollywood back in the spring of 2023. Or when the defeated Rhodes arrived on “WWE Raw” the next night, only to find himself savaged by a backstabbing Brock Lesnar. Or when our hero found himself beaten bloody in a rain-soaked parking lot by “The Final Boss.” Those were the moments where we felt ourselves rooting for Rhodes on that deep, emotional level.
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Once the babyface gets the gold, by contrast, all that momentum dissipates. Watching Rhodes receive his flowers from a tearful WWE universe in Philadelphia may have made our hearts flutter, but we also knew — deep down — that we were mourning the end of one of the best storylines in modern wrestling.
Deciding where to go from there was always going to be trickier. After a two-year chase for the big prize, Rhodes’ first title defense was always going to feel like a foregone conclusion — hence the decision to have the babyface offer it to one of his longest-standing friends in the business, AJ Styles.
Let’s start with the obvious positives: Not only did the two men put on a veritable masterclass of wrestling in their May 2024 showdown, they also received one hell of an ovation from the French crowd. But looking back you can see the slight uncertainty in the creative direction from Backlash’s ill-fitting tagline: “Nightmares Do Come True.”
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Despite the in-ring chemistry between the two Georgia boys, the Styles vs. Rhodes rivalry never really caught fire, partly due to WWE opting to run the Mark Henry fake retirement angle almost to the letter. Having Styles embrace his dark side did little to energize things, and felt more like the creatives playing for time while they decided Rhodes’ next big competitor.
After a one-off win over Logan Paul in Saudi Arabia, Rhodes was launched into his first substantial feud, this time against the man who had ruined his chances on that fateful night in Hollywood at WrestleMania 39: Solo Sikoa. The former Bloodline enforcer had spent the months after WrestleMania 40 reshaping the Samoan stable and now had his eyes on the Universal Championship.
It’s true that few had been crying out for a Solo title shot, but the feud at least carried some jeopardy. The addition of Jacob Fatu, in particular, helped give Sikoa an advantage over Rhodes and his allies on “WWE SmackDown,” even giving the challenger the chance to score a pinfall over the champion — albeit in a tag-match — at 2024’s Money in the Bank.
It also gave us a memorable main event at SummerSlam 2024, with WWE reviving the vaguely-defined “Bloodline Rules” in an obvious callback to WrestleMania 40. Despite the big-match feel, Rhodes’ win wound end up heavily overshadowed by a more urgent subplot: The return of Reigns.
Cody Rhodes’ most successful feud over his first year as WWE champion has arguably been with Kevin Owens. (Rich Freeda/WWE via Getty Images)
(WWE via Getty Images)
Instead, Rhodes’ most successful feud as champion over the past year came against another blast from the past: Kevin Owens. It was during this multi-match saga that we first saw a shift in Rhodes’ character, as “The American Nightmare” wrestled with the pressures that come with being champion.
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Then, just as that looked like the play, the wrestling gods hit us with the mother of all swerves: The John Cena heel turn. Within a few fateful minutes in Toronto, what originally looked like a semi-friendly contest between Rhodes and Cena at WrestleMania 41 became something much, much bigger: A fight for the soul of professional wrestling itself.
Is this how Rhodes’ first title run ends? Plenty of people seem to believe the wind is blowing that way. After all, what is the point of a Cena heel turn if you’re not going to play that particular card properly?
On the other hand, Cena’s attack in Toronto didn’t just shake the foundations of WWE. It also reinvigorated Rhodes’ babyface credentials, turning WWE’s seemingly invincible champion back into the underdog. Rhodes suddenly looked less the top dog and more like the man who cowered from The Rock in the rain one year earlier.
It’s a powerful little twist: The moment we all start to really believe in Rhodes as the champion comes at the same time that we’re also seriously contemplating him losing that status. It’s something that would have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago, and yet here we are — contemplating the downfall of the current face of the WWE universe.
Then again, perhaps the babyface will triumph again, restoring his place at the top of the hierarchy — and putting Cena back in his place. Either way, after a full year at the top, with WrestleMania 41 less than two weeks away, the stakes have finally been raised in the Cody Rhodes championship run — and not a moment too soon.