By Coach B

I wanted something current, but not something that happened 15 minutes ago and already had 900 angry YouTube thumbnails attached to it.

So I went with Cody Rhodes vs. Jey Uso from the 2025 King of the Ring semifinal on Raw.

From my limited exposure to the modern product, fans are not exactly unified on either guy. Cody has his people. Jey has his people. Both also appear to have entire online villages dedicated to sighing heavily every time they appear on camera.

Perfect.

THE WALKING MAY BE THE PRODUCT

First thing: the entrances are absolutely insane.

I get the crowd interaction. I get the singing. I get the laser shows. Entrances are part of the presentation now.

Sometimes “insane” means, “Wow, this is incredible.”

Sometimes it means, “Are we still walking to the ring? Did someone map this out with Oregon Trail pacing?”

There are commercial breaks happening while human beings continue traveling toward a wrestling ring that is already visible.

Maybe the walking is the product now.

There is a very real chance WWE eventually announces a premium live event called The Entrance and it is just 11 people taking 38 minutes to arrive somewhere.

Honestly, probably a sellout.

THE YEET ECONOMY

Let’s talk about Jey Uso.

He seems like a good dude. Comes from a wrestling family. Crowd loves him. The entrance works. The call-and-response works. The sunglasses are over. The Yeet thing is enormously over.

I am not doing the bitter old guy thing where I pretend something isn’t popular because it doesn’t personally speak to me.

It is popular.

I just don’t totally get it.

As a 45-year-old man watching from his couch, Jey gives me the feeling of walking into a restaurant where everyone else already knows the song.

People are standing. Clapping. Pointing. Yelling the correct word at the correct moment.

I’m still by the door with my coat on wondering if there was an orientation meeting.

In the ring, Jey is athletic. He has timing. He knows where the crowd is.

I keep waiting for the match to make me feel whatever the entrance apparently already made everyone else feel.

Maybe that is the trick.

Maybe the entrance is the heat and the match is the receipt.

I don’t know.

I’m an ignorant man trying to learn.

CODY RHODES, CORPORATE BABYFACE MIRACLE

Cody Rhodes is a different animal.

I understand why he grates on people.

He feels like a babyface designed in a corporate boardroom after 46 pages of market research on “premium emotional storytelling.”

He dresses like a senator from a state that only exists in a Marvel movie.

He talks like every sentence knows it might be clipped for a documentary someday.

And yet, from a match-quality standpoint, I usually like watching Cody.

That is the annoying part.

He knows where the camera is. He knows how to build a television match. He carries himself like the biggest thing in the room, which matters more than people want to admit.

Even when the presentation feels polished within an inch of its life, Cody understands the assignment.

Also, the neck tattoo.

I have tried for years to accept it.

I have approached it with maturity.

I have attempted growth.

Nope.

Still looks like a rejected energy drink logo.

The fact that Cody became one of the biggest stars in wrestling while wearing that thing on his throat might be his greatest accomplishment.

That is overcoming adversity.

THE PROBLEM WITH CLEAN

The match itself feels like a standard WWE television main event, just with more staring.

I knew Cody was winning.

The whole thing had “Cody is going to win unless the arena loses power” energy, so I wasn’t exactly chewing through the couch cushion.

That does not automatically kill a wrestling match. You can know who is winning and still enjoy getting there.

The problem is that WWE has become so good at presenting wrestling that sometimes the wrestling starts feeling presented.

Everything is bright.

Everything is smooth.

Everything is enormous.

Every camera is exactly where it should be. Every entrance looks like the Super Bowl halftime show. Everybody is extremely famous and available in 4K.

Somewhere in there, I start missing the possibility that something weird might happen.

When Cody dumps Jey over the top rope, the crowd barely reacts.

They just sort of stare.

Like somebody asked them to watch a copier warm up.

That was when I realized what was bothering me.

The match didn’t feel bad.

It felt assembled.

There is a difference.

SEVEN CROSS RHODES AND A UNION CONTRACT

Eventually Cody wins with the Cross Rhodes.

Or, more accurately, Cody wins with a Cross Rhodes after already doing the Cross Rhodes enough times that I started wondering whether one of them had been filed incorrectly.

Apparently the final one has union protection.

The agreement is not that I believe everything is real. The agreement is that the wrestling itself pretends its own rules matter.

A finisher should mean something.

Damage should mean something.

A giant move should not feel like somebody hitting “duplicate slide” in PowerPoint until the required runtime has been reached.

There is only so much dramatic weight you can attach to the Cross Rhodes when Jey keeps receiving them and everybody involved responds like:

“Well, perhaps the next one will be notarized.”

This is not just Cody.

Modern wrestling has a finisher inflation problem.

Everybody survives everything.

Everybody kicks out.

Everybody stares at the referee in complete disbelief that the move which failed the previous four times has somehow failed again.

At a certain point, shocked is no longer a reaction.

It is part of the match layout.

FINAL THOUGHT

This was not awful.

That sounds more insulting than I mean it.

It was a perfectly watchable modern WWE television main event between two extremely over wrestlers.

Cody looked like a star.

Jey looked like a guy the crowd badly wants to love.

The production was enormous.

The entrances were longer and more elaborate than some pay-per-view matches I watched as a kid.

The match itself left almost nothing behind.

There were moves. There was structure. There was effort. Nobody embarrassed himself.

I just never shook the feeling that I was watching a very expensive machine successfully complete a task.

Final Rating: 5/10

Five is fine.

Nobody needs to apologize.

Nobody needs to be fired.

The ring remained standing. Cody advanced. Jey Yeeted. Netflix successfully delivered several thousand commercials.

Everyone completed their assigned duties.

I just wish somebody had gotten a little dirt on the machine.