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| Cody's awakened a sleeping giant, hasn't he? Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Cody Rhodes (c) vs. The Big Show
How: Show asked for and got the match after Rhodes cost him his shot at wrestling CM Punk for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania.
Heat Check: It all started with the battle royale Chris Jericho won to get his shot at CM Punk. Rhodes had been eliminated, and he decided to tempt fate and make sure that Show wouldn't get his shot either out of spite for being eliminated. This didn't set well with Show, but it turns out that after the match was made, it wasn't Show who was driving the aggression.
Each week, Rhodes showed videos of Big Show's numerous WrestleMania humiliations, including his failures in celebrity matches against Floyd Mayweather, Jr. and Akebono. His crowning moment came from replaying the WrestleMania X-8 clip where Show was yukking it up in then-WWF New York instead of wrestling. Rhodes wasn't just waging mental warfare though, as on RAW this past Monday, he cuffed Show to the ropes and teed off on him with comically oversized boxing gloves.
Analysis: This in many respects has been the best-built match on the card. It's a simple, old-school build of the cocky yet cowardly heel getting one over on the jovial yet massive hero to the point where if the crowd doesn't want to see Rhodes' head become forcibly separated from his shoulders, that crowd should be considered legally dead. For all the wrong they've done by some of their heels, they've oddly (or maybe not so oddly given that his father holds a position of power within the company) given Rhodes one of the most consistently sustained pushes since breaking him out with the "Dashing" gimmick in the middle of 2010.
As for the match quality, I expect this not to get a whole lot of time. Rhodes has improved in the ring by leaps and bounds since his days in Legacy, and when Show is on, he's one of the best big man wrestlers of all-time. I'm not sure if they'll get a chance to tell a full story, but I think they'll do their damnedest to try. This could end up being that match that comes out of leftfield as the one that everyone wishes got five more minutes or so, but what we did get was really, really fun and worth mentioning on end-of-the-year match lists.
Who Should Win: Big Show, actually. While I guess Rhodes "needs" it more, the booking for this feud is set up to see Rhodes get his block knocked off. I feel like giving Show his WrestleMania catharsis so he can go back to making everyone else look good in the coming years is the right thing to do, and hey, it'll be an Intercontinental Championship title change on a PPV that means something. Everybody wins!
Who Will Win: Big Show will. I can't see WWE ever telling a story where the bad guy gets all the heat and then wins, although there is the possibility that Rhodes wins here and the feud continues after WM. Still though, I get the feeling Show's got a meaty knockout fist with Rhodes' name all over it.
