At the start of the year Cody Rhodes and Damien Sandow
were working together as The Rhodes Scholars. At the time it seemed inevitable that
they would be the pairing to take the tag straps from Team Hell No boys Daniel
Bryan and Kane. There were no realistic alternatives and they were too
entertaining to not get a reign.
That didn’t happen of course.
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| This is a team that deserved a title reign |
Instead Rhodes and Sandow mounted an unsuccessful title
challenge at Royal Rumble, got split up and put back together in a matter of
weeks, and then spent months killing time in completely forgettable and not
especially good matches. It was Shield members Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns
who were selected as the men to dethrone Team Hell No, having progressed
throughout the spring from being six man specialists alongside Dean Ambrose to
men who could contribute to shows in more conventional ways.
In the long run it made a little more sense. Rollins and
Reigns benefited not only from being the men to take the belts from THN but
also from holding them for so long. It’s unlikely they’d have got them as soon
as they did had The Rhodes Scholars had them after WrestleMania. And the
aimlessness of Rhodes’ and Sandow’s careers throughout the first half of the
year can be overlooked with hindsight because such a good job was done with
them at Money in the Bank.
But even there I can’t simply heap glowing praise on WWE.
The feud between former best friends Sandow and Rhodes should have continued
for longer than the month it did. The story was there to be told and WWE, for
unfathomable reasons, decided to cut it short.
For Rhodes it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He
got sucked into the company’s lead angle opposite Triple H and Stephanie
McMahon and got a belated run with the tag straps alongside his brother
Goldust. Since being paired with ‘The Bizarre One’ Cody has had a string of
fiery, captivating matches that have reinvigorated the tag championships.
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| All Sandow wants is some consistency, is that too much to ask? |
‘The Intellectual Saviour’ hasn’t fared as well. The
sudden ending of his programme against his former best pal left him drifting
for weeks. The failed cash-in attempt he made on ‘Superman’ Cena could have been the start of something interesting
for him. He cut promos hinting that it would be, saying that his goal in life
was to destroy Cena. Needless to say that’s not happened. It was never likely
to. But the fact that Sandow’s done nothing to advance this stated plan feels
like a wasted opportunity.
It’s interesting how much has changed for the two most
prominent WWE teams since the start of 2013. Neither are together anymore, but
one of the four is a current tag champ. His partner has fallen and risen from
grace numerous times, and currently seems on the cusp of another rise. Kane has
gone from being an unstoppable monster to a modern day interpretation of Pat
Patterson and Gerald Brisco’s stooge role. Meanwhile Daniel Bryan has left the
other three, and the rest of the roster, behind him and become the most popular
man in the company.
