WWE: Who Will Dethrone Cody Rhodes for the Intercontinental Title?

At the WWE’s Hell in a Cell pay-per-view in October, Cody Rhodes brought back the retro, all-white Intercontinental Championship, and a couple of promises along with it. 

Rhodes vowed to defend the title against all comers and to restore the prestige it once had when it was carried by guys like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat. 

So far, not so good. 

Since that bold proclamation, Rhodes has defended the Intercontinental Championship just twice—that very same night against John Morrison and at WWE TLC against Booker T—and done little to help rebuild the credibility of the belt. 

Sure, he’s had a long reign by today’s standards (143 days), but it has been one marred by infrequent title defenses and a lack of challengers, leaving me to wonder how long Rhodes will hold onto the IC title, or better yet, who will take it from him. 

Truth be told, there aren’t a ton of potential candidates at the moment. 

A feud between Rhodes and Daniel Bryan would work, but Bryan is currently the World Heavyweight Champion. Meanwhile, Randy Orton is now sidelined with a major injury (and likely above challenging for that belt anyway) along with Sin Cara. 

Theoretically, a Sheamus-Rhodes feud would be awesome to see. However, with Orton now out, I fully expect the Celtic Warrior to rise up into Orton’s spot as that borderline main eventer/World title contender. 

That really leaves Rhodes in a pickle. 

Smackdown is incredibly low on mid-card baby faces at the moment, as evidenced by the fact that Booker T was taken from the announce table for a short feud with Rhodes and that another star—SPOILER ALERT—came out of the woodwork at Tuesday’s Smackdown taping to ignite a rivalry with the Intercontinental Champion. 

I’ll leave the details out for you, but as has been rumored over the last couple of months, Goldust is set to return on tonight’s Smackdown to kick off his feud with Rhodes, who is his real-life brother. 

Goldust has been campaigning on Twitter for a “Career vs. Title” match against Rhodes at Wrestlemania and it appears as if he may get that. It may even take place before Wrestlemania. 

That’s fine by me, but I don’t see this feud between Rhodes and Goldust ending with Goldust winning the Intercontinental Championship. It wouldn’t make much sense to put Goldust over Rhodes when Rhodes is the guy who is going to be a big part of the WWE’s future, not the other way around. 

Therefore, let’s throw Goldust out as a possible candidate to take the IC title off of Rhodes. 

If there are no plans for Rhodes to be competing for a World title at Wrestlemania (and I don’t think there are) then I would fully expect to see him hold the title until Wrestlemania and probably beyond. In that case, we may have to take the 2011 WWE Draft into account. 

Realistically, any WWE mid-card baby face that’s getting a decent push has a chance to dethrone Rhodes as the Intercontinental Champion. 

My pick? Though he may be a long shot right now, I’m going with R-Truth. 

Truth returned to the WWE on Monday’s episode of Raw, and it looks like he’ll get a pretty solid push as an upper mid-card baby face. If WWE officials want to truly get him over as that crazed comedic face, then it might be good to put him in a feud with a maniacal heel. 

That’s where Rhodes comes in. 

If Rhodes and Truth end up on the same brand following the 2012 WWE Draft and they’re both in their same current position as upper mid-carders, it would make sense to have them feud. Let Truth win the Intercontinental title and then move Rhodes up the card. 

Of course, picking Truth to win the belt is nothing more than a wild guess at this point, but since there are literally countless factors to consider when trying to predict when Rhodes will lose his belt, I don’t think I’m too far off here. 

There aren’t a ton of baby face options for Rhodes to feud with now, and there won’t be in the foreseeable future. Therefore, I’m playing the odds and going with Truth, who should be a mid-card mainstay in 2012.