Cody Rhodes Losing At WrestleMania Was Like Lex Luger Says AEW Star
When Cody Rhodes lost to Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39, it reminded AEW’s Dax Harwood about Lex Luger failing to become WWE Champion.
In July 1993, Lex Luger did the unthinkable when he bodyslammed the WWE World Champion Yokozuna, who weighed over 500 pounds at the time. Prior to that, Luger was a heel in WWE that wasn’t doing much, so it was the company’s way of turning him into a massive babyface.
Luger would go on to earn a WWE World Title match against Yokozuna while the company promoted Lex heavily during the “Lex Express” bus tour all across the USA.
At SummerSlam 1993, Lex Luger managed to beat Yokozuna in a WWE World Title match except the match ended in a countout, which meant Yokozuna kept the title. Despite not winning the WWE World Championship, Luger celebrated as if he did. Luger got another shot at Yokozuna at WrestleMania 10 in 1994, but he failed to win the WWE Title there too. Luger never did become WWE Champion during his run in the company.
Cody Rhodes challenged Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania 39 earlier this month. Many people thought that Cody Rhodes was going to win to “finish his story” and end Roman’s 950+ days as WWE Universal Champion, but it didn’t happen. Roman cheated to win thanks to an assist from Solo Sikoa.
While some people like the legendary “Stone Cold” Steve Austin defended the decision to keep the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship on Roman Reigns, others like Dax Harwood on his FTR podcast bring up Lex Luger as a reason why Cody Rhodes should have won.
“There’s a lot of people that have said, ‘oh, let the story play out.’ And I usually am one of those people, but I will say this. SummerSlamm 1993. Aside from Bret, the hottest new babyface in your territory was Lex Luger. This whole campaign about going on the Lex Express, slamming Yokozuna, and he won by count-out. Imagine if people would’ve said ‘well, it’s SummerSlam. Wrestlemania Ten’s around the corner, let the story play out.’ Well, we did. We let the story play out, and leting that story play out, it killed Lex Luger.”
Dax also spoke about how he didn’t agree with people thinking that Cody Rhodes needed to experience more adversity.
“I saw other people who said that Cody had to ‘overcome more adversity.’ He tore his pec. Thousands of people in the arena saw it. I’m sure hundreds of thousands saw it on the PPV. I don’t know if you can overcome any more adversity than that. And, on top of that, if we only keep it storyline-driven, just show a one-minute package of his prior WWE career.”
“And what he had to overcome there. For God’s sake, before he left, the man was Stardust. Show how he’s overcome, made himself into a main-event level star, and then have him come out on top. It’s okay for the good guy to win sometimes.”
As he continued, Dax made it clear he believes Cody Rhodes should have beat Roman Reigns at WrestleMania to become Undisputed WWE Universal Champion.
“I feel he (Cody Rhodes) should have won the WWE Championship. I’m sure a lot of people were saying ‘oh, well it was too predictable.’ That’s okay, man. Even in matches, I think a lot of the wrestlers think ‘oh well if I do this at the point in the match, it’s too predictable.’ That’s okay, dude, because it’s okay for the fans to have a preconceived idea of what is coming next.
“If you can make them just doubt themselves for one second, if you can make them doubt what’s gonna happen for one second, even if it’s one second. Roman’s going for the cover, one, oh my god he’s gonna, two, f**k he’s gonna, kickout. You had ’em for that one second. Then you got them.”
“I think the story that was being built up, the people that were behind Cody Rhodes, the promos that were cut, he should have been at the end of the night the WWE Heavyweight Champion.”
During that same FTR podcast episode, Dax Harwood announced he was ending his podcast.