Ask 411 Wrestling: Has Anyone Wrestled All Three Members of the Rhodes Family?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

Hey, ya wanna banner?

Shaun is the voice of his generation:

Has the same person wrestled Dusty, Dustin and Cody Rhodes in one on one matches?

Immediately after I read this question, one name popped into my mind:

Randy Orton

The Legend Killer had the last singles match of Dusty Rhodes’ career, a bullrope match at the 2007 Great American Bash pay per view in San Jose, California.

I couldn’t think of a specific Dustin Rhodes versus Randy Orton match, but I assumed that they’d both been around WWE for so long that there had to be several. I was surprised to learn that there has only ever been one Dustin/Randy singles bout, though, taking place on the September 9, 2013 episode of Monday Night Raw from Toronto, Ontario.

Cody Rhodes versus Randy Orton has happened a lot. In fact Cody’s main roster debut in WWE was against Orton on the July 16, 2007 Monday Night Raw from Corpus Christi, Texas, as part of the same storyline that lead to the Dusty/Randy bullrope match mentioned back at the start of this answer. Then between 2010 and 2013, the men wrestled each other quite a few times following the dissolution of Legacy.

That was an obvious answer, so I decided to look into whether there were any less obvious answers.

Then I found Dolph Ziggler, who also qualifies.

When Dolph was Nicky of the Spirit Squad, he had a singles match against Dusty on the November 20, 2006 Raw in Baltimore, Maryland, which was part of the build to a Spirit Squad versus WWE Legends match at that year’s Survivor Series. Goldust and Dolph had three matches between 2009 and 2010, though none of them were televised. In 2015 and 2016, Cody and Dolph had several singles matches when the former was under his Stardust persona, with three of them airing on episodes of WWE Main Event.

Another name that surprised me?

Steve Corino.

Dusty and the King of Old School obviously feuded in ECW, including a bullrope match at Cyberslam 2000. From there, they had matches in various indies, including Dusty’s own Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling promotion and HUSTLE in Japan. Dustin and Corino also faced each other on the indies, including the aforementioned TCW and Hermie Sadler’s UWF in the mid-2000s. Cody and Corino had exactly one match together, on an episode of Ring of Honor television taped on December 4, 2016 at the former ECW Arena.

Let’s also talk about . . .

Jerry Lawler.

The King and Dusty had two matches in the Memphis territory in June of 1977 and then didn’t wrestle each other one-on-one again until 2002 on an indy show in Nashville. They had two more indy matches in Pennsylvania in 2003. Lawler infamously used a gay slur to refer to Goldust on an episode of Raw, and they also wrestled there, specifically on the December 30 1996 and May 26, 1997 episodes of the show, the latter being a King of the Ring tournament match. Finally, on August 25, 2017, Cody Rhodes wrestled Jerry Lawler in Pittsfield, Massachusetts for long-running indy Northeast Wrestling.

I think that might be everybody, but I am open to any additions the comments may have.

Tyler from Winnipeg is still picking loose thumbtacks out of his back:

Randy Orton vs Cactus Jack IC title hardcore title match, does it get 4 stars?

Sure. I might even be willing to go ****1/2.

Jonfw2 is more important than you:

Of the “big 4” original WWE/F pay per views, I’d argue Survivor Series has by far the least significance today and is no longer anywhere near the top of the list in terms of importance.

So how would you rank WWE’s PLEs today in terms of importance?

I’d go:

1. Mania- inarguably first.
2. Rumble- starts the road to Mania, still the most unique two matches in wrestling.
3. EC- I think you could make a good case in recent years this is as important to the Mania build as Rumble is.
4. SummerSlam- still aims to “feel” like the second most important show of the year.
5. Money in the Bank- unique matches and long lasting title implications.
6. Stand and Deliver- for the last several years has consistently had some of the best match quality of Mania weekend.

What say you?

I would flip Money in the Bank and Elimination Chamber on Jon’s list because I feel as though the outcome of the MITB matches generally have more long-lasting effects than the outcome of Chamber matches. With there being two men’s world title matches, two women’s world title matches, and often celebrity matches on Wrestlemania, who gets into any one of those five bouts is far less important than getting a Mania title match used to be, and that’s usually what EC sets up. Meanwhile, there are still new wrestlers being catapulted into world championships for the first time by winning the Money in the Bank briefcase, so I’d call that more significant.

I also couldn’t in good conscience have Stand and Deliver on the list because, no matter how much people like it and no matter how many viewers it appears on the CW, it’s still developmental. Only when we reach the point that wrestlers making “the main roster” is seen as an accomplishment will we be at a point where anything in NXT is as important as anything in mainline WWE.

So, I’d ax S&D from Jon’s list. If I had to replace it – which seems odd because a “top six” list is an unusual countdown – I’d probably replace it with . . . Survivor Series.

I do agree with Jon that SS dropped in significance from the 1980s through the 1990s and beyond, but I actually think that for the last couple of years it’s started to regain prominence because of War Games being used to advance major storylines. If not Survivor Series, I would probably go with Crown Jewel, as Saudi Arabia often gets some of the biggest matches of the year simply because WWE gets paid so much to run its shows there.

Promotional consideration is paid by Lee in Liverpool:

Lord Alfred Hayes worked in the office for the WWF. What were his duties?

He was a road agent for a period of time upon first joining the company, but announcing really was his main gig from about 1984 on.

Josh can hear what you’re saying:

One of the most important aspects of a wrestling show is the commentary, however when attending a TV show or ppv live in person, the fan misses out on this part. My question is would you think it would work if a promotion offered live streaming of commentary for fans in the arena to listen to while watching the event live similar to how a baseball or football fan listens to the radio broadcast of the game while in the stadium or how someone can listen to the live feed between an auto racer and the crew chief while watching the race at the track? Also, are you aware of any promotion trying something like this?

The only promotion that I can think of that tried something like this was World Wrestling All-Stars (WWA), a short lived promotion from the early 2000s that tried to fill the void left by WCW by booking tours in Europe and Australia and producing the occasional pay per view that would be available in the United States. On at least some major WWA shows, the commentary was done live and piped in over the arena P.A. system so that everybody in attendance could hear it.

I personally didn’t like WWA’s model for this, because if the fans can hear the commentary, the wrestlers can hear the commentary, and if that’s going to happen then the wrestlers should be reacting and changing up their strategy based on what is being said. If they don’t, you’ve got a suspension of disbelief issue.

However, that’s not really what Josh was asking about. He was asking about streaming commentary that fans could listen to, presumably on personal device.

I don’t see anything wrong with that per se, but I can honestly say that I would not take advantage of it if it were offered to me as a fan. To me, part of the fun of attending a live event has been that you can hear and see things going on in the ring that you can’t hear and see when you’re watching on television, and if you’re just listening to the same thing everybody is listening to at home, that cuts off some of your ability to have that unique experience. That’s just me, though. Others’ opinions may vary.

I’m not sure what Neal is getting at:

Let’s assume wrestling was still under heavy Kayfabe when Owen Hart fell from the sky that night. How would it have been handled?

Um, pretty much the same way that it was in our reality?

Aside from Jim Ross making the express comment that the death was not part of the entertainment portion of the show, I can’t think of anything about Hart’s death that would have called for a different response if you were were trying to maintain the illusion that wrestling is real.

Yes, there were strong separations between heels and faces during the kayfabe, but if somebody dies one of the most tragic deaths imaginable on an internationally broadcast television show, I think it makes sense even within a traditional heel/face dynamic for people on the opposite side of the locker room to feel bad and mourn.

Joey goes with a classic:

Was Lex Luger supposed to have won the WWF Championship from Yokozuna atSummerSlam 1993 before plans changed? Otherwise, that massive celebration at the end made little sense.

Yes, he was. Vince McMahon decided to hold off the big victory for a later day on the premise that it would be even bigger if given more time to marinate. However, that later day never came.

Bryan is gaming the system:

With Billy Jack Haynes being mentally unfit to stand trial, part of me wonders, is it possible he “worked” legal system?

Pro wrestlers by their nature convince audiences they’re dangerous or crazy. In your opinion could a pro wrestler do that to court appointed psychologists?

As a kid I legit thought George Steele was some guy they found in the woods. In your opinion do you think a really good worker could pull the same illusion off to avoid prosecution?

Is it technically speaking possible?

Sure, I guess it it. Just about anything is possible.

Is it particularly likely?

I doubt it. We’re not talking about Haynes fooling some rube who bought a ticket to see if anybody can break his full nelson. We’re talking about trained professionals using scientifically established models that are designed in part specifically to detect people who are faking it. I’m going to put my money on the trained psychologist over the old worker 99 times out of 100.

Davros is the ghost of Ask 411 past:

What are your predecessors Mathew Sforcina and Justin Watry up to these days?

Sforcina was well loved here but I always loved reading the comments on any Watry article. I’d be interested to hear how they’re getting on.

Mat is still around. He posts short fiction almost daily on his blog, and you can read some of his opinions about wrestling over on his Bluesky.

As was long-rumored among 411mania readers, Justin Watry was a gimmick account and not a real person. I wrote “Watry’s” material about 50% of the time, and Larry Csonka wrote it the other 50% of the time . . .

. . . psych.

No, seriously, Watry was a real dude as far as I know. (Admittedly, I’ve never interacted with him, but you could say that about 90% of the people who I’ve overlapped with on this website.) He wrote for NoDQ.com for a while after parting ways with 411 and is still active on Twitter.

Last time, I answered a question from Big Al about why a promotion would book a wrestler to win a title back from the guy he just dropped it to. I gave my own thoughts, and then I received a message from John Rockhold, promoter of Tri States Wrestling to provide some perspective from somebody who has, you know, actually booked a wrestling promotion:

In response to the question: Why have Wrestler A lose the belt to Wrestler B only to win it back in a few days/weeks; I actually have experience there as a booker/promoter.

The answer is: it depends.

One is it keeps the crowd up. Think Jericho’s phantom win in 2000. That made everyone believe a title change could happen, even though at the end it’s stricken from the record. Or Benoit twice winning the belt, and it getting overturned in 2000. It allows you to judge response to that person with the belt without really committing.

Now for guys like Kane, who lost to win it back, we all know why he won and lost it. They were trying to give SCSA an out for losing by making it so he couldn’t win the match, but then he wasn’t so injured that he had to stay out, so they gave it back. But why give a Dolph a one night run? First, to further the angle. 2nd, you get to call that person a former champ. If we are hyping a match, and I want Dolph to sound like he is a threat “Former world champion Dolph Ziggler seeks to regain his title” sounds much bigger than “Dolph is trying to win the belt for the first time!”

I’ve done the phantom change to see if the crowd wants THAT person to dethrone my champ. I’ve also done the one night win only to lose it right back. One of them literally was because my champ was being an asshole to the rest of the roster, so I had him drop his strap one night, just so he knew I had no problem handing it over to someone he saw as less then him, so he should be polite and kind.

And there you have it, straight from the booker’s desk.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.