How Cody Rhodes Can Change His WWE Character To Counter Randy Orton

Cody Rhodes isn’t turning heel, but WWE plans on making significant alterations to his character.

Two weeks ago on SmackDown, Rhodes’ WrestleMania challenger and longtime friend Randy Orton turned heel on the WWE Champion mere weeks before their main event clash at WrestleMania 42. Given Orton’s history of heel turns, perhaps WWE fans should have seen this coming.

But Orton’s turn was indeed unforeseen, coming just one year after John Cena turned heel in similar fashion, once again in the lead-up to a WrestleMania rivalry with Rhodes, the WWE Champion. Now, Rhodes could be in line for a major character change in order to combat the newly heel Orton.

According to Self Made Pro (h/t EWrestlingNews), Rhodes’ feud with Orton will lead to Rhodes developing a more aggressive and edgy character, "When Cody reemerges on TV for the rest of this build, he will, quote, ‘fight fire with fire.’…The edge Randy is showing right now in this build — Cody is going to show a similar edge in contrast to Randy, or to combat it.”

Indeed, while Rhodes may not be officially moving to the dark side, he’s going to need to get about as close as it gets in order to overcome Orton. And if this feels like history repeating itself, that’s because, well, it is.

Since returning to WWE in 2022, Rhodes has often been the facilitator of a handful of significant heel turns, especially in route to WrestleMania. He’s been at the center of turns for The Rock, Cena and Orton just during WrestleMania season, but also for stars like Kevin Owens as well.

While stars like Karrion Kross and Aleister Black have attempted to get others to embrace their evil sides in recent years, only Rhodes has been able to consistently do so, even though it’s been inadvertently. The idea behind Rhodes being the key factor in so many turns is WWE’s desire to make him a sympathetic figure and keep him in the role as its No. 1 babyface.

But Rhodes’ status as WWE’s “golden boy” and franchise quarterback isn’t working out quite as well for him this time around. After all, it didn’t go unnoticed that Orton was widely cheered during his post-heel-turn promo on last week’s SmackDown or that Rhodes has slowly been being booed more and more over the past several months.

A full-blown heel turn anytime soon, however, appears to be virtually out of the question. Rhodes has been the face of WWE for its biggest boom in nearly three decades, and he recently indicated that he loves being a true babyface as opposed to an anti-hero or, in wrestling terms, “tweener.” Still, That hasn’t prevented Rhodes from realizing that he does need to adjust his character en route to WrestleMania.

Here’s what Rhodes recently told Complex Graps The Podcast (h/t TJRWrestling) in regards to his “golden boy” character and how he plans to embrace it during his current WWE Championship reign: “I heard a term, that was said in a condescending fashion, but I didn’t take it that way, I actually blushed. I heard someone say ‘golden boy’, and I loved it. I don’t know if I was supposed to love it, especially with how they were saying it. But I thought, ‘okay, maybe I’ll lean into that’, and maybe that’s the identity of this reign."

Depending upon who you ask, the term “golden boy” can be a blessing or a curse. Is someone considered a golden boy because of all of their accomplishments or because of the perceived notion that they’ve received favorable treatment on the way to their success? If you’re a fan of Rhodes, you might think it’s the former. If you’re not a fan, you might think it’s the latter.

Until now, Rhodes is embracing the babyface version of WWE’s golden boy. Ideally, he will use that very same label to morph into a massive villain down the road. For the weeks ahead, however, it’s imperative that Rhodes blends both the golden boy aspects of his character and the side of him that will fight Orton with the same fire “The Viper” engulfed him in two weeks ago.

As demonstrated with stars like Cena and Roman Reigns in the past, pure-bred cookie cutter babyfaces only work for so long until fans start to resist them. That resistance is already starting to appear, which might explain why WWE turned Orton heel in an attempt to make Rhodes a different type of babyface.

Rhodes has already proven to be great at shaking hands and kissing babies, but that won’t cut it for his feud with Orton. Rhodes must truly “fight fire with fire,” and that means no more Mister Nice Guy.

It’s time for WWE to give Rhodes an edge, have him fight back and ensure that he turns up the intensity both in the ring and on the microphone. If he doesn’t, he’ll be fighting an uphill battle as he attempts to win and retain fan approval on the road to WrestleMania 42.