WWE star Cody Rhodes was interviewed on Notsam’s Wrestling podcast. Scroll down to watch the entire interview. Cody Rhodes’ documentary, “American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes” premieres July 31st on Peacock. Cody was asked why he feels now is the right time to release this documentary:
“I think likely the reason now is the best time is the WWE audience, the WWE Universe, pro wrestling fans, all these fandoms, sometimes the pockets are different, the circles are different. There’s not as much crossover as we think. Like, you’re a longtime fan. You can tell me about the Mega Powers and you can tell me about Bash at the Beach and you can walk me through that. There’s a lot of fans who come to the shows today, there’s actually a lot of people in the locker room who are on the shows today, who might not know about any of that. That’s why I think now is the perfect time from the perspective of WWE because it really does inform everybody as to what all took place. They think they might know the journey. Oh, he came back in Dallas and Corey Graves said from undesirable to undeniable and the prodigal son and all that awesome stuff that Graves put on it, the soundtrack essentially to the return, but what I love about the documentary is it’s the full story. Remember, we’re talking about finishing the story, which I now hate saying. If you want to know the story we’re talking about, it’s in this documentary.”
Cody was asked if he felt he started to lose his connection with the AEW audience towards the end of his run in that company and why he feels he got it back when he returned to WWE:
“Well, I mean, hats off to all the good guys who are out there because for a hot minute, they were endangered species. I mean, from the insider perspective, the babyface was an endangered species and now just look at the landscape. There’s Seth Rollins, there’s Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, and there’s people popping up left and right in terms of, it’s not so endangered anymore.”
“I think at the end of AEW, I was talking to my students about this the other day, it’s just a case of, I have never underestimated our audience in a sense. That’s why I use a lot of big words and promos and people will say, ‘Oh, he’s talking down to them.’ No, they’re not. They’re not down. Like these people, some of them are doctors. Some of them are lawyers. Some of them are industrial workers. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean they’re not educated, like the wrestling audience is as educated as any audience. But at AEW, I think trying to do what I was doing there at the end was just a bit too meta. ‘Hey, the thing we want is you to turn heel’, so for me to do that, to turn heel, is by saying verbally out loud, ‘I’m not going to do it’, which is being a heel, but that didn’t work, and in a sense, it did because I had a really fun match with Ethan Page where the crowd was just going nuts and I love the polarized crowds, the split crowds. I love the polarized, split crowds because obviously I am part of the Cena era of our industry so I loved it, but it might have just been over the heads of people, but everything was going in such a unique direction, you know, multiple shows and money was through the roof in the industry. It was really wonderful.”
“I think that the WWE audience took to it in a completely different way, as if they dismissed whatever was happening, and this is just my hope and belief, I could be wrong. I think it’s because they knew what you were seeing was real. There’s always that gray matter and that suspension of disbelief, but I think they knew, oh, his return is more than just an individual returning. This is somebody who’s been away for I think six or seven years at the time. This is somebody whose song is almost a rallying cry against WWE almost, and here it is playing out loud. I think maybe at its core, most people can understand a lot of what you’ll see in the doc is you can be the most talented, you can not be talented at all, all these things, but betting on yourself, and I think maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what they saw is yeah, he was this guy and he helped create a promotion, and yes, he did this, and yes, he smashed the throne and all this, but also bet on himself and where it led us. It’s a really beautiful segment at a beautiful show.”
On what it’s like to main-event WrestleMania:
“I think there’s this natural high that you get from doing what we do. You go out, thousands of people, they’re screaming, cheering, booing whatever it might be. But then there’s a next level euphoria that we can only ever hope to get to, and the only way you can get to it is the most selective moment in what we do is the main event of WrestleMania.”
“I was telling my mom, I was like, you know, it’s like getting elected president in the business to know you’ve got the match. You’ve got the match that is going to main-event the year of sports entertainment, also the year of pro wrestling. It’s going to put it all together and this year, there was a whole other feeling about, there was a real excitement. I’m not knocking any previous main events, but I mean if you were there at SoFi and even at home, you could feel it. It’s a tough question to answer because as beautiful and amazing, and that whole week I was just very zen and chill and talked even quieter than I’m talking now and just was so geared up and amped up and ready and every community appearance and everything I did, it was just, even with long hours, it was genuinely just a blessing, but it’s very bittersweet because it’s great to main event WrestleMania. Unbelievable. It’s, again, like being elected president in what we do. You main-evented WrestleMania, something that no one in my family had ever done. However, after having done it, you have to win at WrestleMania. You have to win and I think that’s why, you know, I didn’t come out swinging the next day in terms of whining or moaning.”
“There’s a part of the documentary where they got me coming right through the curtain after. That’s a very heavy feeling. I remember feeling like I had been hit with a hammer right in the chest and the color even had left my body by the time I got to the gorilla, the Go position. I don’t know if it’s sadness or disappointment or shock, shock of this really happened because then sitting there in the ring, I knew I was being filmed. I knew it was being shot and I knew how sad I looked and I was thinking, you gotta get up. In my mind I was saying, you gotta get up. I was looking out at the crowd and I saw my own family and thinking, okay, they can handle this. They’ve seen everything. They can handle this. But looking out and seeing just our fans just hurt and disappointed at the show they’re not supposed to be hurt and disappointed at, was really, I was waiting for like a tomato to hit me in the side of the head. I was just like, oh, this is the worst case scenario.”
“So as exciting as it is to have my name there as the guy who main-evented WrestleMania, which happened to be the most profitable WrestleMania of all time coincidentally, (he chuckles), it’s still, I don’t know. I would love to, hopefully, five years from now ask me a different question. You got to win at WrestleMania.”
Thoughts on Arn Anderson:
“I miss Arn greatly. I think if I had Arn at WrestleMania, things might have been different (he laughs). He just was a huge positive force for me there and he’s so frickin smart about the psychology of a crowd and not enough people go to him. Plenty do, but not enough go to him and say, ‘Hey, what about this’, because they don’t want to change. You don’t have to change it. You should at least hear what he’s thinking. I mean, you got your Spielberg’s and Coppola’s and your Scorsese’s and all these people. That’s the cinema in me. Arn really is one of those. He did this at the highest level. People were rioting over stuff Arn did in the past. I love Arn. I miss him. I would move a lot of things and move mountains if the opportunity came up for Arn to show up and come to my aid one more time.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit the Notsam Wrestling podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
