Cody Rhodes will be making his third defense of this WWE Championship reign against GUNTHER at Clash in Italy, having dethroned Drew McIntyre for the title in March and seen off Randy Orton at WrestleMania in April. 

GUNTHER will be challenging for the lineal World Championship for the first time, having previously held the World Heavyweight Championship twice after setting a 666-day record with the Intercontinental Championship. He retired John Cena via submission in December, then AJ Styles in January, and then answered Paul Heyman’s call to action against Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 42, defeating him and supposedly cashing in his favor to secure a move to “WWE SmackDown” and a WWE Championship contract at Clash in Italy. Seem straightforward enough?

Well, GUNTHER had attacked Rhodes before the contract had been presented to him, thus confirming to the fans that this was the path forward – GUNTHER vs. Rhodes for the title. He was the next week presented with the contract, which he refused to sign because Rhodes had come out during the signing to say address the attack from the week before. 

Thus ensued weeks of Rhodes and General Manager Nick Aldis chasing a signature from GUNTHER to cement the match, to which Royce Keys sought to make use of and threw his own hat in the ring.  GUNTHER then beat Keys in a Number One Contendership match and still refused to sign the contract, despite the match already being announced, advertised, and definitely going to happen. 

Gradually as the shenanigans have gone on, any interest in this match for the marquee title bout it is has diminished. GUNTHER is legitimately one of the best wrestlers in the world, a natural villain, and Rhodes is also no slouch in the ring and just so happens to be objectively the biggest babyface in wrestling today. Rhodes is one of the rare few to hold a clean win over the “Ring General” in WWE, with just Ilja Dragunov, Bron Breakker, and Sami Zayn before him. 

That would have been enough to justify much of the rhyme and reason behind this match being made. GUNTHER would have been a credible enough challenger even before he had retired Cena, Styles, and beat Rollins at ‘Mania. But the route has been so long-winded that this match feels like mercy rather than spectacle. GUNTHER is finally facing Rhodes after a frankly nonsensical build for no reason other than to kill time.

That’s the sort of stuff that Nick Khan is drawing on in Senate Hearings to justify why boxing is broken, and here it is being scripted into a show that’s choosing to be difficult to follow. That’s a dud, unfortunate as it may be.

Written by Max Everett