Bully Ray says he would have refused to produce the finish to Cody Rhodes against Randy Orton, and that people are starting to fall away from Cody because of it.
Orton beat Rhodes at Sunday Night’s Main Event in Atlanta after begging him not to punt him, then hitting a low blow behind the referee’s back and following with an RKO. Rhodes had Orton down and did not take the shot.
Bully Ray went at it on Busted Open, starting with what he says he is already hearing.
“You know how I always talk about the rule of one. It always starts someplace. The pop dies with one. One less person shows up to the arena. It always starts with one less something,” he said. “I heard it from the caller yesterday, and I’m hearing it a little bit in your voice today. Cody has nobody to blame but himself.”
He said he would have killed the finish in the production meeting.
“If I was the producer of that match, if I was sitting in the room with Cody and Randy, and they get to, okay, Bubba, now Randy’s going to be down, Cody’s going to back up, he’s going to go to punt him in the head, but then Randy is going to become a bit of a chicken s*** heel, and he’s going to beg and bleed, and Cody’s not going to do it. But then after Cody doesn’t do it, he’s just going to walk to Randy and get nut shot,” Bully Ray said. “And I’d be like, no, absolutely not. Because my babyface looks like a fool, and this exact scenario has happened in the past, so now you’re giving me a reason to not believe in you, because you have fallen for it one too many times.”
His image for it was a cartoon.
“He becomes Charlie Brown with Lucy pulling the football away,” he said.
The wider argument is that Rhodes’ presentation has been running on the same note for too long.
“There’s just entirely too much respect for Randy Orton right now, and people are starting to wane,” Bully Ray said. “I’m going to go back to when I first started talking about the suit. You may not agree with me, and that’s fine. But I’m telling you, things like that eventually start to come into play. The white meat babyface that Cody is portraying is starting to get a little bit old with people.”
He then tied it to what happened at ringside, where Orton mocked Brandi Rhodes and she threw a drink in his face.
“You want to wear that suit, you want to use four-syllable words, go right ahead. But when you have the opportunity to kick Randy Orton in the head and make things right after he talked about your mother and your wife, and your wife had the balls to throw a beer in his face, but you didn’t have the balls to kick him in it, there’s something wrong,” Bully Ray said.
He said the reason he takes it seriously is what it sounds like from the other side of the curtain.
“I can’t identify with this guy anymore. As a wrestler, that’s one of the worst things I could hear a fan say,” he said. “You’re telling me that you’re no longer into what I do because of another bad decision I made in a ring. I’m losing your fandom.”
The suit reference is to a running criticism Bully Ray has made for months, that Rhodes’ presentation as a besuited corporate babyface has moved him too far from the character that got over. He has raised it repeatedly on the show and acknowledged on Monday that not everyone agrees with him.
He was careful to leave the door open on the booking. Bully Ray said he is willing to be wrong if the payoff justifies it, that he wants to be able to look back on the finish as a pivot rather than a mistake, and asked listeners to tell him what he had missed, saying he has no idea why Rhodes did not go through with it..
