The third installment in the Cody Rhodes/Brock Lesnar feud has been largely unremarkable to this point, not because anyone in particular has put on a poor performance, but just because there hasn’t seemed to be much point to it. They’ve fought twice; they’re 1-1. A rubber match is the most obvious thing in the world, so why bother with much of a build? Just announce the thing, or if you have to, have Rhodes challenge Lesnar, have Lesnar accept, and there you go.

The problem, of course, is that Lesnar isn’t going to show up on every episode, and there was a lot of time to fill between Night of Champions and SummerSlam, not all of which could be taken up by Cody’s brief Dominik Mysterio detour. And so we’ve gotten this feud, which has essentially consisted of Rhodes challenging Lesnar and Lesnar showing up everyone once in a while to brawl about it without actually accepting. He finally did tonight, but only after yet another meandering Rhodes promo in which Cody brought his mom into the equation, who was in attendance in their hometown of Atlanta. Everything about this just screams “artificially drawn out,” from the teases of Lesnar’s music to the fact that he apparently again injured Rhodes’ arm with the Kimura Lock, because God forbid Cody go into a match without some kind of disadvantage.

The problem here, of course, is that there’s just nothing here for Rhodes to sink his teeth into as a storyteller. Lesnar has no connections to Rhodes family; they have no prior history before this year. It’s just a feud that’s happening because it’s happening, and while that works the first time, you need to add more meat to that bone if you want to stretch it out into three matches over three months. Much the same way we felt about the Cody/Dominik feud, you can only do so many segments where Cody comes out and talks into a microphone before we start getting bored, and in this case, they apparently decided to just do the broken arm thing again, because everyone loves it when Rhodes fights hurt. We are beyond ready for the blowoff to this; unfortunately, there are two more “Raws” between now and SummerSlam, and assuming the Lesnar appearances are done for now, we’re not terribly interested in whatever Cody wants to talk about.