Cody Rhodes, Paul Heyman and the Greatest Hype Machines in WWE, AEW

There are stars in professional wrestling who can cut an engaging promo, and then there are those who are the ultimate hype machines.

Wrestling history has its fair share of hype machines, from "Stone Cold" Steve Austin digging deep into his soul and telling The Rock he had to beat him at WrestleMania X-Seven through to John Cena telling CM Punk that his epic title reign meant nothing if he didn't beat him at Night of Champions in 2012.

Several names across WWE and All Elite Wrestling can make you excited with just a single sentence for even the most seemingly mundane match.

They can take a thrown-together main event or a lazily booked headliner and make it seem like the highest-stakes battle or most intensely personal showdown that fans cannot miss.

On the heels of another great example of one Superstar's hype machine excellence, these are the WWE and AEW stars who excel and sell simultaneously.

Rhodes is a fabulous orator and can build any main event into an epic with a single promo.

He doesn't need an elaborate story. He needs just two guys, a championship and a bullet point or two to touch on.

Monday night, with a single reminder that he had twice defeated a beast and dethroned the most dominant champion of this generation, he told Gunther that he doesn't need to be a big, hulking badass to beat him.

With that, a somewhat uninspiring, inter-brand match between two world champions at Crown Jewel took on a whole new meaning.

The American Nightmare reminded The Ring General of his accomplishments and what he has done over the last two years, and the arrogant world heavyweight champion wished himself luck, as if he would need it to defeat the mighty Rhodes.

What was a match between two champions with no backstory or any real reason to happen suddenly became must-watch for fans.

Rhodes knows he can beat Gunther and The Ring General is brimming with overconfidence, so something has to give.

It's a hype promo like that from Rhodes in which the second-generation star shines. He finds even the smallest element to any story and knows that if he can amplify it and find an angle that fans can bite into, he can get them to care.

He did it against Logan Paul, when he echoed what almost every fan was thinking by suggesting he could not hang with the best in the business. He found the fire against AJ Styles to hype up their series of matches.

Upon his return to WWE from AEW, Rhodes immediately went personal, setting the stage for his run to the top prize in the industry by promising to finish his story, hyping a two-year odyssey that would twice take him to the biggest stage in the industry against its top star in Roman Reigns.

The son of another professional wrestler who knew the value of not just cutting a promo but knowing when and where to hit the beats to get the most fan interest out of an upcoming match, Rhodes is as great at that as any other wrestler in any company today.

It is a major reason that he has forged a bond with old and young fans.

MJF is a different breed of hype man.

The Salt of the Earth is a loudmouthed villain who oozes bravado, knows he is God's gift to professional wrestling and does not hesitate to tell you.

While others may use their time to hype a match by putting over their opponent before explaining why they are better than them, MJF tends to stay more self-focused.

And that is not a bad thing.

He is an extraordinary heel who can hype a match and make fans want to see it solely to watch him get his comeuppance. He has no respect for anyone but himself and will vow to beat anyone who steps in the ring with him because he's better than them and we all know it.

He masterfully blends sarcasm, reality, shoot comments and bravado into his hype promos, while occasionally injecting some gravity into it to really hammer home how important a match or segment is.

Typically, by the end of it, MJF either has fans fired up to see him win (during his lone babyface run) or to see him take the beating of a lifetime.

It is a significant trait of his that makes him the single best hype man in AEW today.

Will Ospreay will never be confused with the great promos in wrestling history. He is not a skilled orator and does not excel on the mic like others on this list.

What he does have, though, is an ability to cut a relatable promo. He calls people "bruv" and has a charm that helps him create that all-important bond with the audience.

Then, when the time comes, he raises his voice and puts over the importance of an upcoming match and draws the audience in.

Where Ospreay differs the most from others is that his in-ring skill set is as important to hyping an upcoming match as anything.

Based on all they have seen out of The Aerial Assassin over the years, the fans know they are going to get the best match on any given card, something they simply cannot miss.

When he says he is going to battle Ricochet in an unforgettable match, go to war with MJF, have a banger against Konosuke Takeshita or battle Kenny Omega in a classic, fans know he means it because they have seen it with their own eyes.

The Englishman does not need to be a gifted orator or a complex promo to get them excited about an upcoming contest. His work between the ropes does it for him.

The others on this list can say the same, but for Ospreay, it is as much apart of his aura and his ability to create excitement as anything else. And for that reason, he has earned his spot here.

CM Punk is a student of the game, an old-school professional wrestler who has studied the greats such as Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels and Steve Austin while also borrowing from some of the greatest mic men like Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Raven and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper to craft his own promo style.

Throw in a shoot comment here and some old-fashioned emotion there, and you have a guy whose ability to cut a promo extends far beyond just saying words to further a storyline. You have someone who can take any match he is in and elevate its magnitude tenfold.

Look no further than what he accomplished with Drew McIntyre in 2024.

Whether he was fueled by the heartfelt meaning behind a friendship bracelet or vowing to make The Scottish Warrior bleed before shipping him back to his home country in a box, Punk elevated the intensity and made each of those matches and moments between them feel like the most important thing on the show.

And it was reflected in the reaction the fans gave them every time.

Punk understands the purpose of any feud is to make money so there is an element of hype that needs to go into any promo. It's the difference between cutting an emotion-filled promo that might set up the next chapter of a story and genuinely getting people to care about what is going on between the two people involved.

The Best in the World takes it to the next level every time, mixing different elements depending on the opponent and the crowd temperature, and he manages to churn out his finest sales pitch every time, usually with a little edge to top it all off.

Punk is the closest thing to Piper in that regard; a guy who knows the line and might tiptoe slightly past it on occasion, but always manages to create buzz for whatever it is he is involved in.

This might be the most controversial entry on this list, if only because there is a large portion of the audience who will argue that the quality of Chris Jericho's work has diminished significantly over the last five years.

They are entitled to that opinion and it is not necessarily wrong, either.

At the same time, Jericho is one of the great hype men of all time, a master of the mic who can enhance the meaning of any match or segment by turning the dial to a Spinal Tap-approved "11."

When he is motivated, believes in the angles in which he is involved and knows when to ramp up the intensity, few can bring an audience to his level and make them care about a match or feud as he can.

For some, it has been a while. Maybe going back to the feuds with Kenny Omega, "Hangman" Adam Page, Jon Moxley, Cody Rhodes and MJF earlier in his AEW career. Still, if you pay close attention to Jericho's work now, that salesmanship is still there.

Look no further than the lead-in to the Mark Briscoe match at WrestleDream, where he incited the memory of the late Jay Briscoe to drum up interest in a match that had only a few weeks' worth of build.

Immediately, fans were talking about a contest that no one previously was invested in. Suddenly, Jericho created this hatred for him and love for Briscoe that allowed the match to be a more significant Ring of Honor Championship bout than any other in recent memory.

Does the current Learning Tree stuff work in AEW? Not nearly as much as one would think given the time it has on each show, but Jericho is still a master hype man whose value in that role is still incredibly high when he is motivated by what he is doing.

Paul Heyman is the greatest hype man in professional wrestling history, which includes Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Austin and Cena.

He has made a career of making every match, moment and star seem like the biggest thing in the world as a manager, owner/operator of ECW, advocate, wise man and Hall of Famer.

Heyman could make an audience care about a three-minute squash match on a throwaway episode of Sunday Night Heat in 2007 if he had to. It is the passion with which he speaks, not the volume, that makes fans sit up and take notice of what it is that he is saying.

He can take the umpteenth Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar matchup and find that one element he can sell to the audience unlike anyone else could.

He can use his disheveled appearance, complete with undyed hair, raw, red eyes and a five o'clock shadow to sell the mental stress and moral dilemma Solo Sikoa has put him through in the days since The Enforcer rose to claim the throne of Tribal Chief in The Bloodline.

Whether he is championing Roman Reigns as The Head of the Table, Brock Lesnar as the unconquerable Beast Incarnate, delivering the greatest motivational speech of all time to the ECW locker room ahead of their debut Barely Legal pay-per-view or putting over Triple H as the leader of a new era of professional wrestling during his own Hall of Fame speech, no one can get fans to buy in to what he is selling like Heyman.

In a day and age when the term "GOAT" is thrown at anyone who is even slightly above average at anything, it is with great confidence that this writer can apply that label to Heyman.