Raw go-home show leaves the #1 contender battered and bruised once again
Photo credit: WWE.com, RAW Results, April 1, 2024
Undisputed Universal Champion Roman Reigns, fresh off his powerful 2- hour WWE Legends episode (air date April 1st), and “The Final Boss” The Rock closed out the go-home show of WWE Raw with an savage assault on Cody Rhodes, reminiscent of the following Raw (March 25th). Two weeks in a row, viewers saw The American Nightmare get beaten senseless, this week with The Tribal Chief adding his own flurry of of spears, guillotines, lashings with Rhodes own weight belt, and taunts.
Though Michael Cole reminded us that “Cody isn’t medically cleared to be here”, one can’t help but to chalk that up to kayfabe, given that The Showcase of The Immortals is a mere 5 days away, with Rhodes fighting to finish his story in the main events of both Saturday and Sunday nights.
Objectively, Cody and Seth are hopelessly outnumbered. As the match drew to a close, Rollins came in with a vicious curbstomp to Solo Sikoa, only to turn around and catch a well-timed superkick to the face from none other than Jimmy Uso. Predictably, Rhodes’ former tag team partner Jey Uso attempted to come to the rescue and fight off Jimmy Uso.
As Jey and Jimmy exchanged blows fighting back up the entrance ramp and disappeared backstage, a sense that a similar scenario will play out when the brothers face each other this weekend at Wrestlemania 40 for just the second time in WWE history. As Jey tumbled back out onto the ramp, The Rock appears and starts his own beatdown on Jey. Roman reminded us earlier in the night that The Bloodline motto is “Family Over Everything”, but as the sold-out Brooklyn crowd chanted “YEET”, Reigns quickly retorted “NO YEET”.
With Jey now incapacitated, Rollins seemed doomed. Cue the opening notes of Kingdom, and out comes Cody Rhodes to save the day. But as we’ve seen for the past 3+ years, The Bloodline is always 3 steps ahead. Earlier in the evening, Roman informed us that he was “heading out” to write his induction speech for the legendary Paul Heyman, as he leads the 2024 Hall of Fame Class.
Anyone who has been following the 2 year quest for Cody to finish his story should have known this was a ruse, as just last week both Reigns and Rhodes declared themselves “to be alone”, only for Jimmy and Solo to appear in the crowd later, black hoodie-clad, as the camera panned out to show Rollins and Jey Uso doing the same.
Cody had The Rock ready to suffer his own Rock Bottom finisher atop the announcer table, when Roman appeared and swept Rhodes’ feet out from under him. As he tumbled down, his fate was sealed, and the mollywhopping began.
However, an interesting angle is now more evident than ever. As Reigns and Rock’s dueling lashes landed on the backs on Rollins and Rhodes (could we have anymore R names in this match!?), the crowd began to chant “CM PUNK, CM PUNK”. As it stands, all of Cody’s allies are currently tied up in their own matches that require their full attention, namely Sami Zayn, Jey Uso and Kevin Owens.
With CM Punk still recovering from surgery, but still working commentary for Wrestlemania, he emerges as a key long-time foe of The Rock that still has an axe to grind, as evident from his promo from the March 25th episode of Raw. Punk has not forgotten that way back in 2011, as he sees it, his Wrestlemania moment was taken from him by a one Dwayne Johnson. With Punk not having a match, he might just muster up enough strength to somehow derail things for The Bloodline, not particularly to “help” Cody win, and surely not to help Rollins (whom Punk also hates). Will The Second City Saint play a role in dethroning Roman? The crowd certainly thinks so, and as we know, CM Punk is not one to shy away from controversy. Having had a full 13 years to plan revenge, Wrestlemania 40 might just be Punk’s time to shine after all.
Clearly Cody needs all the help he can get, but we’ll have to tune in to see just who shows up to lend a hand. We know that neither Rhodes nor CM Punk made the leap from AEW back to WWE again to NOT be champion at some point, and Roman’s legendary 1,311+ day title run (at the time of this writing) has to end sometime. Triple H has assured us that this will be the biggest Wrestlemania of all time by far, and in doing so has conjured up all kinds of history-making scenarios that we’ll be discussing decades from now. No matter what happens, we are in for a wild ride this weekend.
