IWC Scum — Street Fighter McIntyre and the Rhodes Less Traveled

Welcome back to the column that puts the incessant whining and complaining in IWC. Wrestlepalooza is shaping up to be a stacked event, and your boy SkitZ is firing on all cylinders unlike Andrade’s tanking career. ESPN trading away the octagon for the squared circle certainly wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card, but sometimes the stars just align. Triple H & Co. really conned the world’s largest sports media empire into believing in kayfabe. What an unprecedented plot twist. Am I the only sucker who thinks it’s unsustainable? Eh, I thought the same thing about all these shitty film adaptations of popular video games, yet here we are!

This Street Fighter movie that’s slated to come out late next year has me flashing back to playing it on Super Nintendo in the mid ‘90s. A group of us preteen boys just downright abusing a defenseless pair of controllers while hurling childish insults at one another. I specifically remember one summer afternoon when we were wreaking havoc on the game console as per usual, and the mounting testosterone in the room leading to the group ganging up on a kid slightly nerdier than me. The scuffle eventually spilled into the hallway and out of earshot; leaving me alone in front of the TV.    

Rather than go looking for trouble that was bound to result in parental punishment, I took advantage of the opening and tried my luck tackling the game solo. Big mistake. After defeating the first handful of opponents, I hit a couple brick walls in the form of Zangief and Vega. They tortured my soul that day. Literal tears welling up from the frustration of failing repeatedly, despite all of my relentless button mashing and attack combos. Eventually the controller went flying as a dejected SkitZ angrily left the room searching for something to punch a hole through.

We’ve all experienced that fleeting sense of controlling one’s destiny when you’re really just at the mercy of the system. Three decades of ups and downs later, and a similar emotion still washes over me whenever Drew McIntyre comes within a breath of becoming World Champion, only to be denied again. The guy’s collectively won it on three separate occasions, sure, but those were consolation prizes. Not coronations. The only time WWE made a conscious choice to establish Drew as “The Chosen One” was for a 10-month stretch in front of an empty arena. Giving McIntyre a snippet last year in Philly of what eluded him at WrestleMania 36 was a nice sentiment, but the company prioritized the Damian Priest experiment over it. One of the many instances in which Trips & Co. sacrificed long-term storytelling for some pop and circumstance. 

Our beloved Scottish Warrior hasn’t yet received the kind of signature run that CM Punk did. That Seth Rollins did. That Roman Reigns did. And most recently, that Cody Rhodes did. What’s ironic is the fact that Vince essentially tried to do with Drew what Hunter ended up doing with Cody. McIntyre was the first promising talent to grow up in WWE, hit the glass ceiling, leave, improve his stock, and later return to superstar treatment. Make no mistake – Drew absolutely delivered when the company anointed him the guy, and under the harshest of conditions. We were thrilled to see him slay the beast at Covid-Mania and finish his redemption story, but McIntyre became an untimely casualty of the pandemic. And when the world began returning to normal, Roman’s historic reign had a stranglehold on both belts, which left Drew endlessly tethered to Sheamus and shit outta luck. 

We could chalk it up to bad timing, but WWE’s had nearly two years to rectify their countless instances of robbing the poor bastard, and they haven’t done shit. McIntyre has all the tools; great look, sharp ring psychology, uses social media as well as anybody in the business, and his character work is top tier. Completely reinvented himself at the end of 2023 after growing a bit stagnant, and he’s remained relevant ever since. Won 2024 Feud of the Year with CM Punk, buddied up with Logan Paul like the true heel that he is, constantly roasts his rivals on Twitter, etc. Drew has beefed with everybody from Big Jim to Jelly Roll here in 2025, and he’s finally back in the title picture; igniting a rivalry I’ve been begging for since Cody fled AEW.  

Now, shame on me for assuming this would be a generational feud saved for WrestleMania season. There’s a lot of parallels between Drew and Cody’s respective careers that the company can delve into, and I have no doubt these two will give us something special before it’s all said and done. The timing just sucks, in more ways than one. 

First off, where’s the logic in throwing the belt back on Rhodes right before he bounced for five weeks to shoot a movie? I thought Cody was supposed to be the anti-Roman? Why not just wait a few extra months to make the switch? Cena could have easily faced someone else at SummerSlam, retained against Logan Paul in Paris, and continued righting the wrongs of a flawed final title run. As the never seen seventeen’s reign rolled on to mixed reviews, I kept hoping he’d drop the belt to a fresher opponent like McIntyre or Gunther, or perhaps even LA Knight. It slowly dawned on me however as the summer unfolded that Cody would be reclaiming the Universal Championship at some point. Rhodes being positioned as John Cena’s successor has been common knowledge for ages, so the passing of the torch moment at SummerSlam was an eventuality. It doesn’t do Drew any favors in the meantime though.

My second gripe revolves solely around the season in which WWE’s decided to kick off this whole thing. Drew just feels like Cody’s fall program. A rivalry many of us have been waiting years for that’s destined to be wrapped up by the Royal Rumble. It’s giving Rhodes/Kevin Owens vibes, and you know how that turned out for the latter… a bunch of jobbing with very little payoff. I know the status quo for WWE is to put their World Champions in cruise control thru these last few months of the year, but a little change of pace would be welcomed. Cody reigning as champ until WM42 or longer is about as exciting as Brock coming back to simply F5 people, and thinking that’s actually entertaining to anyone. 

Rhodes is in that unenviable position of being WWE’s white meat American hero, and during a shit load of rebranding to boot. Cody produces the goods and he’s plenty marketable, but the guy is a tad bland for my tastes. Remember the days when Coldstone Creamery was all the rage? Rhodes to me is a ‘like it’; not a ‘love it’ or a ‘gotta have it’. I’m a firm believer that if it weren’t for the critical success surrounding his “finish the story” arc, fans would’ve turned on Rhodes quicker than we have Road Dogg as a lead writer.  

Ever since he turned real life frustrations into fuel for a career-defining heel run, McIntyre’s been operating at a level that many of his peers simply cannot match. With all due respect to Damian Priest (who receives a ton of unwarranted criticism), Drew deserved a better spot on this year’s WrestleMania card, and the same goes for WM42. People are also justified in questioning why Orton’s getting the anti-Cena treatment these days in terms of booking, but I have little interest in watching Randy put over McIntyre at the moment unless it’s for the WWE Championship.

Mix it up dammit. If Drew doesn’t wrestle the title away from Rhodes before the calendar changes, it feels like he may not get another legitimate shot at becoming World Champion for the foreseeable future. I’m talking current day AJ Styles status, which is as disrespectful as it is unacceptable. Has McIntyre maxed out his opportunities to carry the big gold belt for a fourth or fifth time? Is he stuck in limbo until a big injury strikes, and the company’s forced to rely on Drew to fill in? Is the poor fella fucked because the Cody’s and Seth’s and Roman’s will always supersede him in the pecking order? Is McIntyre gonna be waiting until he’s like 50 for another crack at a decent run because there’s so many aging stars in the company on the cusp of becoming first-timers? 

That’s fair, but I’ll say this much… As happy as rational SkitZ will be for Sami Zayn when he finally wins the big one, the idea of it happening before Drew receives his proper due makes me wanna rage against the machine like I did that SNES console all those years ago. Props to Cody for landing the role, but McIntyre’s more my type of Street Fighter. He plays dirty, has that killer instinct, and dominates the field as an onscreen character. If the wrestling Gods were just, they’d propel Drew to a victory at Wrestlepalooza that kickstarts a JBL-esque title reign. Do I honestly expect anything of the sort though? Hell no.