By Coach B

I wanted to pick 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 seem to have entire online villages dedicated to sighing heavily every time they appear on camera.

That felt about right for this project.

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. I understand that entrances are part of the whole 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?”

But standing around during TV breaks watching people slowly walk toward a ring that is already right there?

Maybe the walking is the product now.

There is a very real chance that someday WWE 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. He comes from a wrestling family. I respect it. The crowd loves him. The entrance works. The call-and-response works. The sunglasses are over. The yeet thing is over. All of that is real.

I am not doing the bitter old guy thing where I pretend something popular is not popular because it does not 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 mostly gives me the feeling of walking into a restaurant where everyone else already knows the song. People are up, clapping, pointing, yelling the word at the right time, and I’m standing there with my coat still on trying to figure out if I missed a meeting.

In the ring, he is athletic. He has timing. He knows where the crowd is. But I keep waiting for the match to make me feel the same thing the entrance apparently already did for everyone else.

Maybe that is the trick. Maybe the entrance is the heat. Maybe 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 too polished, Cody at least 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.

It still looks like a rejected energy drink logo.

The fact that he became one of the biggest stars in the industry while wearing that thing on his throat might be his most impressive accomplishment. That is not even a joke. That is overcoming adversity.

THE PROBLEM WITH CLEAN

The match itself had the feel of a standard 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 the suspense wasn’t exactly making me bite through a couch cushion.

That is not always fatal. Wrestling can still work when the winner feels obvious. The fun is supposed to be in how they get there.

But the current WWE presentation can be so clean that it starts to sand off the danger. Everything is bright. Everything is smooth. Everything is very famous, very lit, and very available on Netflix.

There is no grime. No weirdness. No feeling that something might go wrong and everyone involved would have to figure it out on live television.

When Cody dumps Jey over the top rope, the crowd does not lose its mind. They just sort of stare, blankly, like someone asked them to watch a copier warm up.

That is where the match started losing me.

It felt assembled more than fought.

SEVEN CROSS RHODES AND A UNION CONTRACT

The finish was Cody winning with the Cross Rhodes.

Or, more accurately, Cody won with a Cross Rhodes after already doing it several other times.

Apparently, the seventh one is the one that has union protection.

I know wrestling is fake, but the issue is when it stops pretending anything matters inside its own world.

A finisher should mean something. Damage should mean something. A big move should not feel like someone hitting “duplicate slide” in PowerPoint until the match reaches the required runtime.

There is only so much dramatic weight you can put on a move if the guy keeps taking it and we all just keep sitting there like, “Well, maybe this next one has the manager’s signature on it.”

And look, this is not just a Cody thing. Modern wrestling across the board has a finisher inflation problem. Everybody is surviving everything. Everybody is kicking out. Everybody is shocked.

At a certain point, shocked is no longer a reaction. It is a scheduling obligation.

FINAL THOUGHT

This was not awful.

That almost sounds insulting, but I mean it honestly. It was a perfectly watchable modern WWE television main event between two very 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 bigger than some pay-per-view matches I watched as a kid.

But as a match, it felt a little hollow.

Not dead. Not useless. Just hollow.

There were moments. There was structure. There was effort. But I never shook the feeling that I was watching a very expensive machine successfully complete a task.

Final Rating: 5/10

It’s a 5 at the bar. You aren’t sad you took it home. It wasn’t a complete waste of time. There were some moments. You might even tell yourself it was better than sitting alone watching Mid-South clips at midnight.

But you’re probably going to think twice before calling back.