Coming into Monday night’s King of the Ring semifinals match, I was apprehensive about Cody Rhodes and Jey Uso’s showdown. Truth be told, even though I’m a Rhodes girl, the beloved “American Nightmare” tends to be just a bit overhyped, and even if we give Rhodes credit for his in-ring work, Uso’s always been more known for his story work. Of course, there are high-strung emotions into facing off against your friend, but the emotional pull of his story with Rhodes pales in comparison to say, his work with the Bloodline. I wasn’t particularly excited for this match, and I didn’t expect Rhodes vs. Uso to live up to the fanfare that WWE was absolutely glazing with it.

I love being wrong.

Rhodes and Uso’s match in the King of the Ring semifinals was extraordinarily good. I’ve yet to see a better example of Uso’s in-ring improvement, Rhodes was on top of his game, and in-ring tropes that I normally find myself turned off to were the highlights of this main event.

People have their opinions about finisher kickouts, but the stalemate between the two was what made this match so enjoyable. What I was really captured by was the mirroring between Rhodes and Uso. Uso tried to use Cross Rhodes on Rhodes, but Rhodes managed to wiggle out and deliver the a Cody Cutter, a signature (as opposed to a finisher), for a near-fall. Okay, fine and good. Uso nailed Rhodes with a spear (another signature), and Rhodes also kicked out at the last second. In any other match this would be par for the course, but considering the stalemate that this match had been in at that point — literally a tug-of-war, mirroring in some sense as they went tit for tat — it just felt like they were really tugging back and forth, getting down to the nitty gritty. It makes you want to watch more — to see by how many thousandths, or millionths, of a second these two speeding forces will be separated by. Add in their ongoing friendship narrative to the match, and the back-and-forth becomes a matter of equivalence. By having Uso and Rhodes mirror each others’ kickouts like this, it further cements their ties as friends, and provides an emotional aspect to the technique of mirroring.

By allowing Uso to got on the same level as Rhodes, we’re also allowed to see an aspect of Uso that we seldom get to see. Uso absolutely sunk his teeth into Rhodes tonight in that bout of equivalence, and that aggression was a treat to behold. Rhodes took everything Uso threw at him — Superkicks, Cross Rhodes, Uso Splash, and everything in between — like a champ, and you can tell that Uso is comfortable in that ring with Rhodes. Those two have insane in-ring chemistry, and it allowed Uso to show more that aggression that his character has sorely lacked.

While Cody walked out with the win, I’d argue that no man lost tonight. Their match was simply lovely.

Written by Angeline Phu