Before he left WWE to reinvent himself and eventually “finish the story,” Cody Rhodes was so creatively frustrated with his Stardust character that he had planned to quit professional wrestling entirely and pursue a completely different career path: coaching high school wrestling.
A Pity Party
On his show What Do You Wanna Talk About?, the former Undisputed WWE Champion reflected on the difficult period near the end of his first run with the company, which included the infamous incident where his WrestleMania 29 match was cut at the last minute.
A Different Path
Rhodes revealed that he had hit such a low point that he had given up on his dreams in sports entertainment and was actively planning to go back to school to become a coach in his home state of Georgia.
“If wrestling was to go away tomorrow? I’d be an amateur wrestling coach, like a high school wrestling coach. Yes, that was my plan. Shockingly, you’re gonna be like, what? But around the time we got cut at WrestleMania, and around the time Stardust popped up, I was going to get my degree so that in the public school system in Georgia, I could be an amateur wrestling coach. I had completely given up on entertainment, on ever making it. I thought I’d done everything right. I was very pity party. Feel sorry for myself, all those things. Couldn’t get a look left or right. And you know, I a series of things happened in my life where now I look back and I’m like, man, what the like? Who were you? You weren’t you. Weren’t you? It’s like a gap of a few years of not being me, the journey.”
Thankfully for wrestling fans, Rhodes chose to bet on himself, leaving WWE in 2016 to embark on a journey that took him around the world and ultimately back to the main event of WrestleMania.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit What Do You Wanna Talk About? with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
