Cody [Rhodes] was injured while doing crowd work at an ROH show and couldn’t defend his IWGP United States Championship against Beretta on the War of the Worlds tour, but he’s managed to have three title defenses against another recently-injured wrestler, Joey Ryan.
On the WSW International Assualt tour (subtitle: The Elite Takeover), Ryan first challenged Cody on November 24 and the two faced off in a staring contest while a “Stare forever!” chant broke out from the Melbourne audience.
Ryan made another attempt on the following night’s show in Perth, this time in a “2 out of 3 falls Dwayne, paper, scissors match.” Cody once again retained his championship.
https://twitter.com/JoeyRyanOnline/status/1066660011538083855
The famous dick wrestler tried again on November 26 in Sydney but was once again defeated by the American Nightmare. In case you were wondering if any of his other appendages were as supernaturally strong as his penis, it has now been confirmed that this is not the case, at least for that thumb.
https://twitter.com/JoeyRyanOnline/status/1067037507735482369
It’s unclear if any of the matches, which would be much more at home in DDT, where Ryan is a frequent guest star, than the King of Sports, have been officially recognized as title defenses by the International Wrestling Grand Prix, but it sounds like Australian audiences enjoyed them.
We don’t know when Cody will next defend the United States Championship in a wrestling match, but he’s still scheduled to wrestle Jay Lethal for the ROH World Championship at Final Battle on December 14, so a title match at Wrestle Kingdom 13 seems probable. The NJPW English-language commentary team has talked about Juice Robinson defeating Beretta in the replacement match for Cody vs. Beretta on the War of the Worlds tour as a de-facto number one contender match, so it’s likely we could see Cody vs. Robinson III go down on January 4 at the Tokyo Dome.
