Anatomy of a Disaster: Cody Rhodes vs. MJF

ANATOMY OF A DISASTER: CODY RHODES vs. MJF:
-Here’s a request for a new Disaster column- the infamous “Cody with a sunset flip” blood feud match between Cody Rhodes & MJF! Actually it’s more infamous because of that damn tattoo. So how disastrous IS this match? Well I’ve never seen it before, but I’ll take a look and pick it apart in the nitpickiest way possible! Read on!

THE STAGE: AEW Revolution (Feb. 29th 2020)

THE PERFORMERS:
Cody Rhodes: Cody, trained by the “OVW Special” of Al Snow & Danny Davis (plus Randy Orton & Ricky Morton), had gone from a midcard WWE guy for several years into being a Bullet Club dude in New Japan, where online snarkers would dub him the “Three-Star Wonder”- a guy who could have a peak match of *** when everyone else in New Japan seemed to be a snowflake factory, with Meltzer and the people inspired by him to value what Meltzer likes giving ****-****** ratings to all the top bouts. Cody had been one of the most vocal “I’ve been misused” guys in WWE, which made him a fan favorite, then caused some snark due to the aforementioned mid-tier match output he was having, but he got a big push when he was one of the guys to form All Elite Wrestling. He was Chris Jericho’s first feud as AEW World Champion, sided by his corner-man…

MJF: Maxwell Jacob Friedman debuted in 2015 and essentially farted around the indies for four years, mostly in Combat Zone Wrestling and Major League Wrestling, both podunk indies out of the U.S. East Coast. He then got hired by AEW as one of their signature “build up a new guy” talents, quickly amassing wins and showing up as “Cody Rhodes’s Best Friend” in an angle so obvious it was like when Scotty Anton showed up as “RVD’s FRIEND” in ECW. Within a couple months it seemed like he had a big push out of nowhere as Cody’s corner-man.

So I had just started watching AEW at the point of this feud, as MJF had been in Cody’s corner in his feud against AEW World Champion Chris Jericho. At AEW Full Gear, Cody challenged Jericho with the stipulation that if he lost, he would never be able to challenge for the belt again. At the end of the bout, MJF threw in the towel for Cody, costing him the match. Some people suspected at that point this would set up a feud later down the line… but MJF just kicked Cody in the balls to seal the deal right there. MJF got a bodyguard minion in the huge (ie. undersized for 1980s WWF standards) Wardlow and Cody entered into a blood feud. This match was set up with three stipulations: 1) Cody could not touch MJF until the bout, 2) Cody would have to defeat Wardlow in a steel cage match, and 3) Cody would take ten lashes from MJF’s belt. A lot of this was to put Cody over further, as the frustration should have earned him sympathy from the fans, the Wardlow match featured a highlight-reel moonsault off the top of the GIGANTIC cage to make Cody look cool, and the belt lashings were legitimate and left real marks, thus putting over Cody as a badass. At least, this was all the IDEA. Cody had broken his toe the week before, losing the nail off it, too.

Along the way, Cody’s increasingly-weird mannerisms, his ghoulish Aryan look and his openly-WWE-style matches in the “American Indie/Japan-Knockoff” AEW universe stuck out like a sore thumb. And so people were kinda iffy about him, despite being set up as AEW’s #1 or 2 babyface. Hopefully he wouldn’t do anything ELSE super off-putting or we’d have some trouble!

CODY RHODES (w/ Arn Anderson, Dustin Rhodes, Brandi Rhodes & 7 Other Douches) vs. MAXWELL JACOB FRIEDMAN (w/ Wardlow):
* MJF comes out first- man I forgot he used to shave the sides of his head so far down. He’s less roided than he is these days, and sports a weird cloak thingie and red & black trunks. Cody gets sung down by Downstait, the band who does his theme song (who apparently are very, very un-good live and either forget the words or don’t know how to enunciate), and immediately stuns the world by revealing the godalmightiest worst tattoo in recorded history, a GIGANTIC U.S. Flag/Skull logo on his neck. It’s both poorly placed and way too big, immediately distracting everyone and making them think Cody is a gigantic moron. The bandleader goes “Chicago, where we at!” then finishes the lyrics “BLAO! NO!! NOW I AM MY KINGDOM! Ah-shee ablabbo akaggo belssof AH BUILT MY KINGDOM Naoh you Blah-so-my! Mah dreams a GUY MY NIGH!” as the camera zooms WAY in on the tattoo to really emphasize it.

So Cody at least aims to punch and kick MJF immediately, the heel bailing out of the ring with a smirk to annoy him, which works. Cody then awkwardly stops and starts as he zips around to try his Cody Cutter (slingshot cutter off the middle rope), but MJF bails again and now sits in a chair at ringside while Arn tries to settle Cody down. MJF tosses a fan’s beer at a naysayer in a funny bit, stalls some more, then runs into a Cody combo. At some point Cody’s rage has gotta see him take down MJF and just pummel him, not doing this elaborate “gut punch, regular punch, then leaping kick” kinda thing. Max WHIPPED HIM, remember. They each trade singular punches but Cody does Dustin’s drop-down one and hits his Cody Cutter for one. MJF rolls to the ramp, but Cody takes a leisurely jog to the back, then comes “roaring” out and does an athletic leaping clothesline over the top to bring MJF back into the ring. See, the “ramp run” moves are a universally-beloved part of matches on big shows, but that requires some intensity and venom behind it (check when Aja Kong or someone does it- it looks VICIOUS), not this acrobatic leap over the ropes. You gotta do that like you’re trying to drive their organs out their back! Notably, it doesn’t even get over- you barely hear the fans react.

Cody, calm as you please, can’t get the pin and stomps MJF’s hands just once before doing an elaborate sunset flip, the universal sign of the blood feud, in the corner for two. They accidentally kick each other at the same time and stall out, then do a slow sequence of MJF eye-poking and stomping Cody’s broken toe when he catches Max’s foot and smirks at him. Cody then calmly chases MJF to the ropes and elbows him, setting up a spinning Alabama Slam as the fans are just super quiet save for the occasional random clap. A short, quiet “Cody” chant springs up a bit, but he pulls MJF up and throws the occasional punch as they kill more and more time. Speaking of, Wardlow pulls MJF to the floor to save him from this brutal assault, and Brandy smirks as she walks up and chucks beer at him. Wardlow goes after her, so Cody hits a dive and only NOW starts getting fired up, though he keeps checking his toe and MJF catches him coming back in and chucks him into the post. This hurts the arm enough that MJF goes to work on it, hitting a gutwrench hammerlock powerbomb for two. MJF stomps the arm, struts, and works a top wristlock as a “babyface fight-up” spot but at least him stalling works for what his character is. The fight-up doesn’t get over at all, and MJF snaps the arm to put himself back in the lead and fights for his finisher, the “Salt of the Earth” Fujiwara armbar, which Cody doesn’t even bother to sell, just calmly rolling about- man, this is where he needs to BOLT and thrash around in there and sell the desperation of not wanting to get caught in that move. MJF “improvises” a double-arm from the position, but Cody bites the rope to escape- okay, that works.

This is the body language Cody uses to sell having his bootless, broken toe bitten by the dastardly heel. Put some EFFORT into it, dude!

MJF now starts the next part of the match, tearing off Cody’s boot and standing on the broken toe, then BITING IT for our best reaction so far. And holy jesus Cody’s selling SUCKS- he just rolls the fuck over and doesn’t make a sound. Guy should be SCREAMING, thrashing around, grabbing his toe, etc., to pull this off and (more importantly) build sympathy for himself and his next big comeback. Instead he just rolls over. MJF earns a small “you suck fuck!” chant for that and puts Cody up top, but Cody harmlessly slides down (ONTO THE FOOT THAT JUST GOT BIT) and bonks MJF on the turnbuckles. Cody just pounds the mat a bit to build up some applause and puts MJF up top (not even bothering to limp), and hits an inverted superduperplex. Again a small “wow” from the crowd and then they calm right back down. See all this would be getting a way better reaction if he’d sold the foot stuff beforehand. Or remembered that his arm was hurt. Instead, MJF leaps to the apron and Cody hits his slingshot enzuigiri, then tries a dive but stalls when Wardlow leaps to the apron to get in his way, causing Arn to whip out a chair. MJF is now bleeding (… from the kick?) and only NOW does Cody start working him over with punches, repeatedly targeting the cut. He still does turnbuckle punches and stuff as it’s a very WWE-ized way to work it (if anything needed the “mount their broken body and lay waste with overhand shots” NWA spot, it was this), but at least we’re getting there. He tries for MJF’s draping DDT but MJF slides out and hits his draping piledriver, but gets caught openly cheating using the ropes (and Wardlow). This stalls things further when Brandi hits a running dive off the apron on Wardlow, but he catches her, drawing in Cody, who accidentally boots down Arn when Wardlow moves.

Cody stands there all upset, not even checking on Arn really, then gets nailed in the balls for two, but he & MJF suplex each other to the floor. Both do the “last second dive in” to break the ten-count, then sell exhaustion (at least that’s earned) by trading shots and flopping around, Cody doing Dusty’s “flip, flop & fly” but MJF just collapses with his eyes set wide open. But when Cody tries the CrossRhodes (spinning inverted ddt), MJF reveals he was faking and reverses to his own for two! He takes off Cody’s weight-belt, but when the ref won’t let him use it, he opens himself up to a ballshot from Cody, who hits the world’s worst Vertebreaker/Kudo Driver for two. Cody gets the belt and NOW the fans are into it, as he convinces the ref to let him do it and gets two big whips on MJF’s back before tossing the belt into the stands. Max is dying and pulls himself up Cody’s body, hugging him and saying “I’m sorry!”, only to spit in Cody’s face. Incredulous, Cody gets enraged and hits two straight CrossRhodes, but after hauling him up for a third, MJF knees him in the face to stun him and uses his Dynamite Diamond Ring and clocks Cody, flopping onto him for the pin at (24:38). MJF wins the feud! A replay shows that he in fact slipped the ring on while the ref was dealing with Cody’s belt thing, meaning that Cody DID lose because of his own aggression! Psychology!

—-

Man, I watched the build to this on TV for a month or so and this seemed like Cody wanted to KILL MJF… so it’s very weird seeing him come out there and just do the basic “Cody Match” full of elaborate set-ups, calmly walking around, not reacting facially to anything, etc. He’s supposed to despise this man, who is doing his best to act like a cowardly dick out to infuriate his opponent, and Cody’s just like ._. because I guess he’s perfectly calm? The ideal fiery babyface should be ENRAGED at the heel, demanding a match because he’s close to murder, and instead Cody’s just calmly going about his day, smirking at MJF’s mistakes and doing light jogging to hit him with slow-moving strikes. Now, there’s a way you can do that but still “maintain calm”- have occasional flare-ups of viciousness. Cody goes for chokes or an eye-gouge, or a flurry of punches before stopping himself or Arn yells at him to calm down- maybe cost him a bit as the ref admonishes him and MJF nails him in the nuts, or Cody gets too aggressive and charges into the post or SOMETHING. Not this calm, basic offense like he’s just trying to get the 1-2-3- MJF cost him the World Title (for FOREVER!) then whipped him like a dog! Cody should want Max DEAD! Like, I’ve seen wrestlers use more viciousness and brutality to beat people they LIKE than this shit.

The thing with the boot is hilarious and out of nowhere- it’s established that Cody’s toe is legitimately broken, and MJF does all this good heeling by tearing off the boot and biting it like a sadistic bastard, but Cody A) doesn’t even sell the bite and B) just lands harmlessly on his feet seconds later and just walks around carrying MJF so none of that even works. He spends another 10-15 minutes with one boot on for no reason- like they just came up with a “Foot-biting” spot when Cody got hurt and didn’t plan anything else AROUND it, figuring it would be memorable enough just to have that spot.

And funnily enough, Cody’s inability to sell that is what makes his next comeback such a dud- if he’d been flailing and thrashing around, gritting his teeth or flaring up his neck tendons and stuff, the fans would be more hateful towards the heel, and more eager to see Cody get even- they would have popped big for him laying waste to MJF and fighting through the pain. Instead it’s just this dull slow clap to the next move because Cody didn’t sell any pain at all. This should have been a signature spot of the match and something people remember, but Cody’s effectively killed it through his blank performance. Then he spends the rest of the match with one boot, not acting like anything is wrong with his foot at all (never mind the arm injury also disappearing). Then they do the Brandi/Arn thing, the suplex to the floor, the spit and the finish, all “signature spots” probably come up with Cody in the planning phase, none of which are strung together terribly well. Then MJF just eats two finishers, but has the wherewithal to get a foreign object and pop Cody? What was his plan, to eat two finishers and be conscious enough to still do that?

A big issue is the match time. TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES is an insane match length, especially for two guys with not the best offense, and so there’s all this calm jogging about, short combos of strikes, long setups into moves and then milking the impact, which is not what a blood feud needs. This also serves to kill the crowd, as the slower pace instead bores them and keeps the match’s peaks (such as they are) too far apart. Cody seemed to dominate most of the offense, making it look like he was either bored or trying so hard to conserve cardio he didn’t put any effort into things, and that led right to MJF’s slow sequence of arm-work. Cody’s stuff is also very… awkward and unathletic. He has that John Cena thing where he’s all stops & starts and comes in at weird angles for stuff. It often leaves his opponents having to stand there and act like he’s “hard to avoid” but they really just go stock-still. There’s a weird flailiness to his movements- when he goes for lockups or gets into position, he starts windmilling his arms and it doesn’t look good. Add to that Cody’s inability to sell- just leaning back and grimacing with the occasional noise instead of howling, thrashing, desperately reaching for the ropes, etc. He doesn’t even sell MJF attempting his finisher, then expects people to get into any of his comebacks?

The match’s only saving grace is some decent stuff in the end, when Cody finally remembered he hated this man and tried to hurt him, getting fired up. And the basic story of “Cody gets too aggressive and pays for it” paying off a couple of times, like wasting time with Wardlow repeatedly, the whipping, and hitting too many moves on MJF and getting careless about it. But even then, Cody’s big “flaw” there was trying his finisher too often? I mean, hitting your finisher twice in a row is usually pretty good tactics- the best part of the whole thing was Cody getting so aggressive with his belt and having to deal with the ref over that, because it let MJF have the time and distraction to put on his ring (which is more effective than any head-drop finisher AEW has).

Rating: **1/4 (just a very weak, very long wrestling match with all sorts of basic construction issues wrong with it- not abject incompetence. Raised a 1/4* because of the smart finish)

The Fallout: The match wasn’t really derided all that much- it just got mostly average ratings amidst a show full of the kind of stuff AEW fans love- it was probably in the bottom third of matches that night, though.

The feud really doesn’t go Cody’s way at all- it’s meant to be this unfortunate “tragedy” that Cody is robbed of his shot at the AEW World Title (and probably a way to assure fans that Cody, a co-founder of the company, isn’t just awarding himself the top spot and looks to “put over” the younger generation), but it really just cements Cody as the center of “The Codyverse”- a strange world where he would feud with 1-2 people at a time and their entire orbit would be around Cody and involve nobody else for months and months and months- numerous wrestlers (like Lance Archer, weeks after this as both guys just move on to other feuds) would come out of Cody feuds in much worse situations, and Cody himself being a poor fit for AEW would only become more and more apparent. AEW was very much a “Workrate Fed” with guys going out of their way to do their own “KENTA/Marufuji Match” (a NOAH match featuring stiff strikes, increasingly huge MOVEZ leading to guaranteed-finishers resulting in 2.9 kickouts, a fight on the apron leading to an apron-based move, then a kickout of another sure finisher, then an MDK move winning- watching one of their legendary contests was eye-opening for just how much it looks like the modern “Dynamite Banger” match), and Cody… was not producing that. He came off like a WWE trained guy doing WWE matches with a slow pace, slow build and maybe one big spot, and he stuck out like a sore thumb.

MJF would later do one of his “worked shoot” promos where he openly complains about this match, which was supposed to be a signature highlight of his career and put him on the next level, being overshadowed by “the neck tattoo” as that was all anyone could talk about the next day. I mean, a TATTOO overshadowed a 24-minute match. Though his career didn’t suffer- he got more and more boos until he was cheered as a dickhead heel, feuding with CM Punk and others to be put over (even after losing most of the blowoff matches on PPV, he was so triumphant on TV that it hardly mattered, and could just cut another promo to get some credibility back anyways), and finally became the AEW World Champion. Having a mediocre match with Cody Rhodes on a show full of AEW-style flashy “Bangers” didn’t really harm him, and at least he won.

But honestly, the tattoo seemed so damn dumb it was like it created an inescapable snowball that caused Cody’s career to tumble down the mountain, as he was the only act in AEW that was actively being shit on by the fans, making him a “babyface who gets booed” by the subset of snarky lapsed WWE fans who were cheering the rest of AEW. Cody seemed ruined… and then joined WWE and got a mega-push, where within a couple of years he was the ordained Champion, unseating the dominant Roman Reigns at WrestleMania and becoming an icon. Man, wrestling is such a fucking weird amazing business, isn’t it? So in any case as “Disasters” go I think both dudes are okay with how their careers have gone since, haha. Cody’s apparently even gotten some good babyface selling going! Cody wrestling a too-long **-ish match isn’t as bad as getting a neck tat that makes him look like the High King of Dumbass Mountain in terms of what it meant for his AEW run, either.

Mitigating Factors: I mean, Cody had enough power as VP to un-mitigate any mitigating factors I would think! He could have constructed a better match, realized he didn’t need 24 minutes, etc. Also he coulda just got the tattoo the next week so people wouldn’t be talking about it! Pretty much every bad thing about this match includes Cody-centric things- he was massively more experienced than MJF, could have called a better match, could have kept from wrestling a basic slow-paced, deliberate match full of clunky moves and awful selling, and more. I mean, the only thing really working against the match was that they were in a MOVEZ promotion while neither guy could bring the MOVEZ- and MJF’s comparative inexperience as a 5-year vet.

Overall: It’s not the worst match out there- for a 24-minute match it’s certainly not as bad as it COULD have been- it’s just too long, too slow, has poor selling from Cody, too many dumb spots interspersed, and is the wrong kind of match for what this crowd was responding to. I mean as an “Anatomy of a Disaster” it’s a ** match- hardly that bad on paper. It’s just wrong for what it was, and kind of helped serve to hurt Cody. The sunset flip spot has had a lot of snark tossed its way, but at least it’s just the one time. What was more awful was Cody acting the whole time like he was just a regular dude having a regular match when he was supposed to want this man dead given all the build- he wrestled the whole time like that until the very end when suddenly NOW he gets fired up. They could have told all kinds of fun stories about Cody trying to keep himself calm and not lose his shit (done by having him briefly get enraged but scale back; Arn lecturing him, etc.), having MJF try to provoke him into losing his temper, and more.

But I mean, if the purpose of the match was to have a great match, then it was an abject failure. They barely made it over **, and they only did that by doing their best work in the last 5 minutes of an insanely long one. But the ACTUAL purpose of the match is mostly to put over MJF as this dastardly cheating asshole who will break the rules and actually get his hand raised because of it, and to turn this relative nobody into a featured act who can and will beat the top stars. And in that sense the match was a resounding success in spite of the dumb tattoo that led Cody to disaster. So yes, I have successfully argued myself into defending this mostly boring match as a success, lol. And in “Anatomy of a Disaster”, no less!