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BUFFALO, N.Y. — In what was, perhaps, the most deeply personal tag match in WWE history, Dusty Rhodes watched his sons, Cody Rhodes and Goldust, team together for the first time to defeat WWE Tag Team Champions Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns. With their victory, the Rhodes brothers won Cody his job back, earned The Bizarre One a new contract with WWE and — most importantly — defended the honor of their family name.
Photos from the emotional WWE Battleground encounter
With so much on the line, it was a match Cody and Goldust could not afford to lose. Yet, the Rhodes brothers did not display the nerves of men fighting for the past, present and future of their family.
Watch the tense moment when this match was made on Raw
Approaching the ring to the cowbell funk of Dusty’s infectious “Common Man Boogie,” the sons and their father couldn’t have looked any different, but they were so very clearly a family. That bond was made apparent only minutes into the match when all three members of The Shield squared off with the Rhodes clan on the outside of the ring, and Dusty pulled off his belt to let the villains know that he could still get funky like a monkey if he had to.
It has been said that the best tag teams operate as two men with one brain. For Cody and Goldust, it was two men working with one heart. Although Rollins and Reigns are feared for their disarming hive mind, they could not drive a wedge between the brothers’ bond. By the time the younger Rhodes braved a 2-on-1 assault from The Shield and made a tag to The Bizarre One, the Buffalo crowd seemed to realize that the brothers were not going to lose the fight.
See the match that got Cody Rhodes fired
That’s not to say that this non-title showdown was anything less than a war between these two teams. Goldust was nearly counted out early on when a failed crossbody sent him on an ugly spiral to the arena floor. And the prolonged beating The Shield gave the veteran not only wiped all the gold paint from his face, but nearly took him out of the match.
When The Bizarre One finally tagged in Cody, the former Intercontinental Champion went after the champions with the fury of a man who had been assaulted in the most personal of ways. Clearly sending a message to the COO who fired him and the woman who disrespected his family, Rhodes took out all three members of The Shield with a belly full of fire and begged for more.
Watch Goldust attempt to save his brother's job against Randy Orton
In that moment, the team that had been impossible to break apart began to fracture under the pressure applied by the Rhodes family. When Dean Ambrose jawed off with Dusty on the outside of the ring, he was bopped between the eyes with a fistful of leather belt and then put down with a Bionic Elbow. Reigns, setting his sights on a distracted Dusty, may have speared the WWE Hall of Famer on the concrete floor had Goldust not taken out the big Samoan from out of nowhere.
That mayhem on the outside left Cody alone in the ring with Rollins. After shaking off an attempted rollup, the youngest son sent his opponent across the canvas and then took him on a one-way trip to the Cross Rhodes.
Find out what the Rhodes family had to say after this grueling bout
The First Niagara Center became unglued as the official counted three and Cody, Goldust and Dusty embraced in the ring in a purely emotional moment. They had done it. They had stood up to “The Authority,” they had broken the unbreakable Shield and they had saved their family’s legacy.
Did the victory mark the end of the war between the McMahons and the Rhodes? That’s hard to say, but when the history books are written, tonight’s battle will go to a plumber’s son and his two boys, who fought — and won — as a family.