While most fans wanted nothing more than to see “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes pull out the win at WrestleMania 39 and end Roman Reigns' run as the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion, Kevin Nash, the supersized muscle of nWo and The Kliq had other ideas. Despite fan interest being firmly in Rhodes' corner, the man formerly known as “Diesel” believed that getting Reigns to 1,000 days as champion was simply too historic to pass up, as he noted on his Kliq This podcast.
“My point on this show, maybe two or three weeks earlier, was I didn’t think Roman was going to go,” Nash noted via Fightful. “When you have 950 days behind somebody, you’ve gotta get to 1,000. You have to. If you were in charge, if baseball was a work, you would definitely make sure somebody surpasses Bonds’ 73 home runs. You’d book that.”
Nash is correct, he technically did predict that Reigns would retain and was one of the few pundits who actually put that out into the WWE Universe before “The Showcase of the Immortals.” Still, just because Nash had Reigns in the main event of Mania doesn't mean he's against Rhodes winning the belt his father never could… he just wants to see it done in a very specific way.
“It was like when Orndorff was with Hogan,” Nash added. “You could see that there was friction, and you knew that Orndorff was gonna turn on Hogan. It was just a matter of when. I think that’s what they’re gonna do with Cody. The money is always gonna be with the babyface chasing the belt.”
Asked by his co-host, Sean Oliver, if he would turn Rhodes heel should he win the belt, Nash endorsed the idea, comparing “The American Nightmare” to “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan.
“Yes. I don’t mean this as any slight to anybody, but I look at people’s pops, and people’s pops during the start of my career to this past Sunday,” Nash said. “You could take everybody, you could take Hogan, Rock, Shawn, Taker, Bret, Roman, Cody, put them all in a basket, and put them in the ring, and then have Austin’s f**king glass break, and when s**t was in his wheelhouse, and there was nothing as electric and as that f**ing [pop] because he was the real deal. He was every man’s champion. That was my boy, man. That was my friend. I would watch that, I’d be so f**king proud, like f**k yeah.”
Now, to Rhodes' credit, he's noted on multiple occasions that he doesn't want to turn heel in WWE, suggesting that, in a promotion that caters to younger kids, he would prefer to be a golden boy of all things good. Still, leaning into the Homelander vibe isn't too hard, especially if fans turn on him like they did in AEW, there's always a chance WWE could go all-in on turning their babyface hero heel and build up a new challenger, someone like Sami Zayn, to take his crown.
Freddie Prinze Jr. believes Backlash will define Cody Rhodes' future.
Discussing the decision to not only go with Reigns at WrestleMania 39 but then have Brock Lesnar beat the absolute crap out of Cody Rhodes in the main event of the RAW after WrestleMania, Hollywood actor/former WWE writer Freddie Prinze Jr. noted just how important the presumed main event of Backlash could be, with WWE having a chance to put over “The American Nightmare” once more.
“Oh, they're just killing poor Cody. Just killing the poor guy,” Prinze said via Sportskeeda. “I mean, look, if he gets to go over Brock Lesnar in Puerto Rico at Backlash, then okay. Then you're saving it because he's beating Brock Lesnar, and then you let him go after Roman again.”
But what if that doesn't happen? What if WWE decides to pummel Rhodes into submission once more and give Lesnar yet another win on a massive stage? Well, in the opinion of Prinze, that could be a massive headline grabber.
“Although the way things have been going, they’ll reverse squash it like when Goldberg beat Brock in nine seconds and then he will beat Cody and nine seconds, and it’ll be over and I’ll be like, Yo,” Prinze said via Essential Sports.
Would WWE actually have Lesnar take out Rhodes in single-digit seconds to further “make him earn” a rematch with Reigns? I mean, probably not, but then again, who predicted that Rhodes would book a tag team match with Lesnar only for him to get attacked a few hours later? At this point, no outcome is outside of the realm of possibility in WWE.
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