WWE has a new World Heavyweight Championship, and Cody Rhodes should probably stay far away from it. Paul Levesque unveiled the new title on Monday, announcing that the first champion would be crowned at Night of Champions next month in Jeddah and that it would belong to whichever roster does not draft Roman Reigns as part of the 2023 WWE Draft. The latest backstage rumors regarding the Draft, which begins this Friday, indicate the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion will stay on SmackDown while Rhodes is expected to remain on Raw. That would make “The American Nightmare” an obvious frontrunner for this new championship, but it could also be a mistake that gets resoundingly rejected by fans. There are two reasons why.
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The first is how the championship has already been presented. Levesque’s glowing praise of Reigns’ title run during his promo on Raw immediately presented the new title as a step below “The Tribal Chief.” Fans online quickly compared it to a consolation prize, something everyone else can fight over since none of them can stand up to Reigns. To have Rhodes fail to beat Reigns at WrestleMania 39 and then win this championship roughly two months later will only further promote that idea, leaving Rhodes with a fraction of the momentum he had entering the WrestleMania main event.
The second reason is due to Rhodes’ own logic. He declared in his first promo after his WrestleMania 38 return that the only reason he was back in WWE was to win the WWE Championship, a title that eluded the Rhodes family for decades. While the Undisputed Universal nature of the title’s current status complicates things a little, that black championship title Reigns carries around on one of his shoulders is still the same one with the sixty-year lineage that goes all the way back to Buddy Rogers’ inaugural reign in 1963.
This new title carries none of that lineage or sentimental value for Rhodes. By every indication, it’s going to be treated as a brand-new title. And even if WWE wants to be charitable and say it’s picking up where the previous World Heavyweight Championship left off in 2013, that title’s history only reaches back to 2002. Since Rhodes has firmly and repeatedly stated his mission is to win the WWE Championship, it wouldn’t make much sense for this to even be a blip on his radar. Instead, he should be entirely focused on getting a rematch with Reigns to, as he put it, “finish the story.”
There’s a lot to be said about this new world championship, from its compromised design to its “silver medal” presentation. But, as Seth Rollins displayed later in the same episode, WWE can make people care about this new championship if the work gets put in. That work starts with crowning a strong first champion, and while crowning Rhodes might look good on paper it’s not going to get the reaction WWE is hoping for.
