The criticism of a lack of heat to the CM Punk vs. Cody Rhodes story is a legitimate one, but WWE is addressing it by simply letting the story play out. The two have been playing nice for some time now, all with the understanding that they, as two of the top stars in not just the company but the industry, couldn\u2019t avoid each other forever. Eventually, they would have to throw hands, probably over a championship, and both invited as much.<\/p>\n
Well, that time is here now that Punk defeated Sami Zayn to win the WWE championship Zayn won off Rhodes. They cleared away<\/a> Zayn \u2014 and GUNTHER \u2014 at Saturday Night\u2019s Main Event to ensure they\u2019ll work a singles match at SummerSlam, and then added some punch to the program by continuing to tease out tension between the two in the form of some accidental physical contact from both sides. That played out on TV. What came next was a backstage confrontation<\/a> that aired only on social media.<\/p>\n Now, they\u2019ve taken it to the stage, right on WWE\u2019s YouTube for the SummerSlam Kickoff event. It\u2019s fair to say tensions have boiled over:<\/p>\n Punk is doing the thing where he\u2019s making like Rhodes is making a mountain out of a molehill, despite his history. Rhodes is trying to remain true to himself while acknowledging that history and questioning just how legitimate Punk\u2019s intentions actually are. Cody is the true blue babyface here, and Punk is the guy who is hard to get along with who will definitely start shit with everyone, including and maybe especially with those close to him.<\/p>\n What I like here is they are starting to actually lean into all this, with Rhodes outright saying what he\u2019s so clearly been holding back and Punk being willing to start disrespecting him straight up to his face.<\/p>\n This is headed in the right direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The criticism of a lack of heat to the CM Punk vs. Cody Rhodes story is a legitimate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,6321,6879,4366,4367],"class_list":["post-773511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-saturday-nights-main-event","tag-videos","tag-wwe","tag-wwe-smackdown"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}