Unless you follow everything — and I mean everything — SmackDown’s angle where Pat McAfee aligned with Randy Orton makes no sense. Even if you do, it still doesn’t.
Worse, as McAfee and later Cody Rhodes tried to explain it, they sent mixed messages that only muddied dirty waters even further.
The Setup
Since attacking his former friend Rhodes three weeks ago, Orton has been clear that his mission is to win a 15th world title for himself, not the fans — a point he reiterated to his hometown crowd in St. Louis
on Friday.
Rhodes appeared, the two brawled, and then McAfee showed up and kicked Rhodes in the groin. After insulting the city of St. Louis, presumably for heel heat, McAfee then went on to paint himself as a crusader for “the forgotten fan” and holdovers from WWE’s Attitude Era, at the advice of Orton.
The same Orton who said he is doing all this for himself.
McAfee explained he got a call from Orton shortly after McAfee did an Instagram Q&A a month ago, when he said a WWE return seemed unlikely. At the time, he thought the business had passed him by, but added, “I feel like WWE is in a good spot without me, and I’ll continue to watch.”
On Friday, though, McAfee sang a different tune. The business hadn’t passed him by. Instead, he just couldn’t watch it anymore because it “was absolute shit.” Meanwhile, Orton continued to beat Rhodes, who offered no resistance, taking both a physical and verbal shellacking.
McAfee then questioned why WrestleMania tickets were still available with Orton on the card before turning his attention to Rhodes, citing a record-low SmackDown rating and calling him a “puppet champion” who represents “everything we hate.”
Initially, fans were split. Some cheered, some booed, and others were completely confused. But by the segment’s end, nearly everyone in St. Louis was booing.
The Internet
Unless you follow McAfee on social media, you might have missed him addressing “the marks” — the same people he claimed to represent moments earlier. Tagging wrestling outlets, including Busted Open and Fightful, he said he would never appear on a wrestling show again if Orton lost at Mania.
He also made sure to remind fans that tickets for the event were still available.
If you were online during SmackDown, you might have seen the reactions. Some praised McAfee’s performance or were intrigued by the angle. But mostly, many were frustrated or confused by his involvement.
Wrestling historian Brian R. Solomon asked, “Who thought it’d be a good idea to go on TV and put over how much better the product was a quarter of a century ago? Before the majority of current fans were watching and before many of them were even born?”
Rhodes Responds
The focus on the past continued as Rhodes responded later on SmackDown, making another dated reference while talking about McAfee as Orton’s mystery man.
“That’s like if Scott Hall and Kevin Nash talked about the third man in the nWo, and instead of Hulk Hogan, it was Disco Inferno,” he said.
To get this joke, you had to know WCW in 1996, or that Disco Inferno was a mid-card talent there, one that Rhodes has mocked before. Based on the lack of reaction, most fans in St. Louis clearly didn’t get it.
Rhodes continued, saying McAfee “and everyone who represents you, and I know who I’m talking to, can kiss my ass!”
Again, to appreciate that zinger, you had to know McAfee is represented by super-agent Ari Emanuel, CEO of TKO, WWE’s parent company. This fueled speculation that Emanuel — who said he’s looking to make McAfee the next Sylvester Stallone — was behind placing him in this spot.
Rhodes then dared WWE to fire him, noting how that worked out the last time, though it was Rhodes who had requested his release. He defended his career, citing his role in setting box office records with Roman Reigns, The Rock, and John Cena.
In what was supposed to be a moment of candor, Rhodes questioned whether he still knew how to be a bad guy, referencing his kids and his dream job. But then he teased being a bad guy, saying he was now listening to voices in his head, adding, “You don’t want to hear what they had to say.”
TL;DR
Amid this mess, Rhodes said one thing that was easy to understand.
“It is as simple as this. It’s a wrestling match with 20 years of history with the two very best wrestlers to do it,” referring to his Mania match with Orton.
It was that simple — until Friday night.
Some called the segments “too inside” or “too meta.” In reality, it was just too much. Nothing made sense unless you’ve been following wrestling for 30 years and obsessively tracking backstage gossip and wrestling news for at least the past decade.
Even then, it collapses under its own contradictions. Orton says he’s doing this for himself. McAfee claims they’re representing “the forgotten fan,” here to save the business from Rhodes, who is suddenly bad for the bottom line, though WWE CCO Paul Levesque has suggested otherwise.
With just two weeks until WrestleMania, a main event that could have easily been built on friendship, betrayal, and legacy devolved into a self-serving corporate mess that trashed its product and champion in a segment so inside it would take a proctologist to find a nugget of sense.
Good luck sifting through that.
