WWE News: Cody Rhodes Upset Over Dusty Rhodes Teddy Bear Segment On ‘Monday Night RAW’
By the end of his WWE run, Cody Rhodes was so upset with the company and its insistence on him using the Stardust gimmick that he had no problem asking for his release. And while he’s tried his best not to harbor any ill will toward WWE since then, the second-generation wrestler appears to have been very unhappy with a recent Monday Night RAW segment involving a Dusty Rhodes teddy bear whose head got ripped off by the villainous Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson.
The untimely death of WWE Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes in 2015 was the catalyst for his son Cody Rhodes to want to part with his Stardust gimmick. Originally launched in 2014 as a takeoff on older half-brother Dustin Rhodes’ Goldust gimmick, Stardust enjoyed some early success, teaming with Goldust to win the WWE Tag Team Championships. But the man behind the gimmick was forced to rethink things following the death of his father. As Cody explained to Rolling Stone earlier this month, the 31-year-old wrestler “lost faith” in Stardust when Dusty died in June 2015.
“When I lost my dad, I probably should have taken a long time to let that all settle in. I guess I got the idea in my mind that I was gonna pick up where he left off, and I can’t do that as Stardust. To me, he was the greatest wrestler ever, and if people don’t know that, it’s my job to make them know that.”
A lot of those old wounds were apparently reopened for Cody Rhodes on this week’s episode of Monday Night RAW. In a backstage segment, Bayley showed up to give Goldust a polka dot-wearing Dusty Rhodes teddy bear in honor of his late father. But it wasn’t long before the heel tag team of Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson stepped in, ripping off the bear’s head and setting up a match between Gallows and Anderson and The Golden Truth (Goldust and R-Truth).
That was the most disrespectful thing to date #wweraw #raw #goldust #theclub #karlanderson pic.twitter.com/70o3F2AytJ
— Travon Harper (@deadspider98) December 27, 2016
Reacting to the segment, Cody Rhodes took to Twitter to say that he hopes the people behind the segment never get to feel how it’s like to lose a parent like he did. Since Cody posted the tweet, it’s been retweeted close to 1,000 times, and elicited a lot of positive comments from his followers.
One user told Rhodes that the segment was “f—ed up,” while another said that it was a case of WWE “going too far.” A third follower compared the segment to a 2006 promo where Randy Orton told Rey Mysterio that his real-life friend Eddie Guerrero, who died in November 2005, was “in hell,” but believed it wasn’t as bad as the decade-old Orton/Mysterio segment.
Not gonna' say something mean or blow a whistle. All I can say…is that whoever produced that, I hope they never know what this feels like
— Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) December 27, 2016
Appreciate all the kind words tonight & even the dissenting opinions. I turned something private to public. I'm not perfect. I just miss him
— Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) December 27, 2016
According to WrestlingNews.co, the segment was ill-timed, and a move that could “put heat” on WWE due to its execution.
“I can see some people in WWE thinking that Dusty would have approved of the segment as a way to get heat on Gallows and Anderson, but segments like this tend to put heat on the company instead of the wrestlers themselves because fans know that everything they see on the show is scripted by the writers.”
In the hours that followed this week’s Monday Night RAW episode, Cody had simmered down, thanking his followers for their words of support, and even their “dissenting opinions,” but also admitting that he still misses his father, Dusty Rhodes. But did the teddy bear segment achieve what was intended, Cody Rhodes’ Twitter posts notwithstanding? As Bleacher Report sees it, it was probably much ado about nothing, given how low The Golden Truth is on the card, and how Gallows and Anderson have yet to regain the momentum they lost earlier in the year.
[Featured Image by WWE]
