Orton, Rhodes audible for WrestleMania WWE title clash feels hotshot

So, all things being fair from my Elimination Chamber predictions, Cody Rhodes being in the WrestleMania main event regardless of the Chamber outcome is worth like a half point because WWE can’t decide on what they’re doing, right?

(I’m joking… Probably.)

And yet, I jest because I think that as much as I prefer Rhodes and Randy Orton as a better match up, a better main event and a potentially better story, the late shift feels desperate, reeks of disorganization and the absence of foresight, and holistically is a disservice to Rhodes, Orton and Drew McIntyre, and the company.

When I say “company” I’m referring to WWE, not TKO as a whole. My impression is that where the parent company is concerned they are content with the shift as it’s definitely more of a money match intended to complement CM Punk and Roman Reigns’ title match. In the end they won’t care how this looks with 5-6 weeks left to build a relatively fresh match-up. Are Rhodes and Orton pros? Will they do a good job in transforming their shared history into something tangibly good for WrestleMania? The answers to those questions is yes. And none of that matters to them. For TKO it’s a matter of shifting tickets and increased revenues, not the sanctity of WrestleMania, the main event in principle or the integrity of the WWE title.

That is of course TKO’s objective and directive as a business and as the financial stewards of WWE. The purity of perception of the product’s value doesn’t matter to the conversation if that is the baseline. The story doesn’t matter. The proper payoff doesn’t matter, nor does the truncation of Drew McIntyre’s fourth world title reign ahead of WrestleMania. It’s a business move, and McIntyre is not Rhodes nor Orton when you account for legacy, history and drawing power with respect to any other combination of the two amongst the three of them.

If that’s the decision for reasons a, b, c, then the creative needs to do a better job of doing right by the people involved in my opinion. Yes, it’s a business, but the players involved all have intersecting stories, all have histories together and you could have easily gone any other pathway to serve their stories. That includes a triple threat or fatal 4 way. Now is that the best option? That’s debatable. I think where we ended up is the best outcome of a convoluted set of scenarios if we’re not going the multi-man route. That convolution is also something I was concerned about coming out of Elimination Chamber, which I mentioned in my show predictions.

I think we ended up in a less convoluted outcome in the sense that the Chamber outcome was relatively clean compared to how bad I thought it would be. But I also didn’t envision we’d have the added step of a title change to arrive at the final destination when we could have frankly, realistically skipped a McIntyre run altogether. In the big picture, if he’s not carrying the championship into WrestleMania as he arguably deserves, what was the point?

Since Elimination Chamber reports have come out that the company wanted Rhodes featured in promotional efforts surrounding both the Royal Rumble and Chamber, and that’s hardly impactful if he’s holding the title. I understand that, but how we got here is a whirling game of musical chairs where one person who figured into both recent WWE title changes, and the man who held the title since early January, are outside the title picture and likely matching against each other in what will amount to a low-priority grudge match while Rhodes and Orton pay off their multi-decade history.

You can understand the reasoning, and even force the creative to make sense, but the optics make the build toward WrestleMania feel disorganized with the big goal being contested by Rhodes and Orton, while McIntyre and Jacob Fatu get the “shit-disturber consolation prize.” I think that for as much as Orton and Rhodes is the smart move, I think McIntyre had done a good job with what he was given with this last reign, combined with the build up to his win, to justify his earning a world title match at WrestleMania. I think he deserved to walk into the event with the title around his waist, and you could justify Rhodes and Fatu joining him because they had created what felt like a dynamic where the three of them all had stakes, all should have been there, and would have then been able to pay off 3-4 months of storytelling by the time we got to mid-April. Extending from all of that, you then would have built up Fatu in the main event scene.

I fully expected Rhodes to leave WrestleMania with the championship, and less so him walking into the showcase with gold around his waist. That gets everyone involved, and you could have easily found something else for Orton to do until after Mania. And then from there you could easily do a multi-month program between Rhodes and Orton over the WWE title building toward a huge blow-off at SummerSlam. That feels justified with the substance and value to back up their shared history and the fans’ investment into both wrestlers. I don’t disagree it’s the best option, however I would counter the argument and say it’s a disservice to what you can do with them in the bigger picture outside the WrestleMania bubble.

Even if you look beyond the simple equation of a Rhodes-Fatu-McIntyre triple threat, a match that has the history and magnitude of Orton and Rhodes deserves more than a 5-week build, and it deserves more than the optics of what this comes across as on the Road to WrestleMania. That just feels needlessly late to be setting up one of your marquee title matches, never mind incorporating a title change. Then to have it hinge on an element that wasn’t a part of the build as far back as before the Royal Rumble, and then summarily expect the players to be the pros they are and carry the build effectively on razor-thin margins doesn’t sound like a thoroughly-considered option.

I think Rhodes and Orton deserve more than that and the optics that accompany it. They will make the most of it, and I think they will do themselves justice with a good payoff that realistically, probably results in Orton becoming 15-time champion. However that does not qualify the shift that leaves one former champion in the cold, and another key piece of the puzzle in the cold with a potential match between them that is of much lesser value. There’s no escaping that perception even if you fully, unabashedly support the move. Despite Rhodes and Orton being the marquee matchup, there’s something to be said for rewarding all of the people who carried your main event program for months. Albeit the best option, I disagree with how we arrived here, how it affects the value and trajectory of what an Orton-Rhodes match could have been, and how that presents to an audience when you’re expecting them to invest their time and money into your product.

Subscription services are a growing expense. Streaming platforms are becoming a luxury whose services become an accumulated expense from month to month. You need to instill a level of value to incentivize maintaining that subscription, and part of that is balance, and for something that has entertainment value as a foundational piece, creatively speaking that entails a build that pays respect to the show you’re building to, the people involved who are charged with executing that plan, and to the people you’re expecting to fork over their hard-earned money to watch. In this case it’s a matter of whether the value from the decision has merit in your eyes on its own basis, or whether it makes sense in context of how we got here.