Cody Rhodes Reveals He Was Jealous Of Former WWE Star, Meeting With Vince McMahon
November 26, 2020 | News | No Comments
Cody Rhodes recently appeared as a guest on Edge and Christian’s podcast, E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness, for an in-depth interview. Featured below are some of the highlights.
On feeling like he owes Rey Mysterio: “I have a Wookiee life debt to Rey Mysterio and he doesn’t even know it. Rey was kind of the one who ribbed me and brought me into the office that day with Vince [McMahon] and said, ‘I want to work Cody at WrestleMania – he [has] got some good ideas.’ And I did, thank God. And that’s where I think Vince kind of even played me. He said, like, ‘oh, do you have it on paper?’ and I actually had it on paper in my bag and I handed it to him. And after that, he kind of just grumbled and I got a ‘yes’ out of that grumble. I owe Rey everything I have, man. He [doesn’t] even know. He [doesn’t] even spell my name right, C-O-D-E-Y. That’s got to be a rib.”
On learning that he can always get better while working in WWE: “One thing I consistently learned with WWE, I’m sure [Edge and Christian] both, I know [Edge and Christian] both figured this out over and over again, you think you’re working hard, and then you enter something new, you fill that block. And then, you’re like, ‘gosh, I’m covering this every second of every day.’ Like, in that company, you always find out that you could be working harder, I guess, if that makes any sense. There’s always this graduated level you’re working at.”
On his time as part of The Legacy with Ted DiBiase Jr.: “With The Legacy particularly, I was the ugly duckling. I had a great spot, but I was the fall guy. Teddy was positioned to be the next Randy. Randy was the man. I knew I had to supersede Teddy in terms of they put me on SmackDown, they we’re expecting much, but they definitely didn’t set me up to fail. I started the ‘Dashing’ Cody Rhodes stuff and during that period, I learned that I had to work a-whole-nother degree harder to compete.
“There was this pivotal moment where I had to stop competing with my peers like Dolph Ziggler, and [The] Miz, and DiBiase, and [Jack] Swagger, all those guys. There came a moment when I stopped competing with them. We did a South America tour and after a show, Teddy got real drunk on the bus. Many guys get real drunk on the bus. I loved Teddy, but I was really jealous of him, just incredibly jealous of him. And he came into catering and he was so drunk only one eye was open, and he’s kind of just like slurring his words, and he approached the piano. It was a really nice piano in the middle of South America, like this balcony overlooking the water, and all this. And he flipped the piano lid up real hard and I was like, ‘oh no, this is going to be a mess.’ And he sat down and with one eye, he starts playing, and he starts playing some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard from a piano and he’s just smashed, just destroyed. And I actually remember I told someone at the table, ‘do you know what? I’m done. I’m done competing with him. He’s just… I’m just going to compete with myself because when you’re a [WWE] Hall Of Famer’s son and you don’t have to work very hard to get the gig, it becomes a matter of once you get the gig, you have to work incredibly hard to even get in your own discussion.”
On his time evolving as a singles competitor in WWE after The Legacy group ended: “I always kind of felt, like, stuff was clicking with ‘Dashing’ Cody Rhodes, stuff with the mask clicked more, but it wasn’t clicking to the level of, like, ‘holy smokes, he’s going to win Money In The Bank and he’s our next guy’. It was clicking to a degree, so after a while, I started to think, especially around the Stardust period, I started to think, ‘maybe this is going to be my thing is that when I finally get super to where I want to get, when I finally win, I’m going to be a combination of all these things’ because I did like to commit. I always liked to commit to the spots that I got. I really committed to Stardust because I thought it was so ridiculous that if you didn’t commit it would just be sad. Like, you had to really commit to it and own it or otherwise you could see Cody in it and that was sad, versus, when the lights are up, Stardust.”
On parting ways with WWE: “Leaving [WWE] was really difficult, but it was also the easiest decision I had ever made. It was difficult because I had a family. 19 years old, I go to OVW, and I have my friends, and I have little Zack Ryder, he’s still there, and I have Dustin [Runnels]. I’ve got family there and I’ve got Arn [Anderson], who… Arn is a huge part… all these people, whatever. And that was hard to not tell them because this was a decision I had to make.”
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On wanting to go back to Cody Rhodes after his father, Dusty Rhodes, passed away: “I wanted to go back to being Cody Rhodes. Vince was being receptive to it. Hunter was being receptive to it. The problem was they were taking too long. And my dad had just [passed]. It may have been a minute, but he passed away. And there was some inner turmoil and when you have that inner turmoil, the last thing you want is turmoil at work, I think. And I just couldn’t handle it. It was sad. It was sad to put on that suit. It was like being a sad clown, literally. It was sad. And I knew they were receptive and thought maybe this was a good idea, but I needed it now. It just came to, ‘I’m going to leave, you don’t get to fire me, but you also don’t get to fix me. I’m going to go out and I’m going to fix myself. And who knows what I’m going to do after that?'”
Check out the complete episode of E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness featuring the Cody Rhodes interview at Art19.com.
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