WWE Royal Rumble winner Cody Rhodes joined Corey Graves’ “After The Bell” podast this week.
Cody Rhodes talked about giving everything he had to rehabbing his injury:
“I had that moment with my wife, Brandi, where she didn’t tell me in a mean way, but she let me know that if I got back, and I hadn’t done everything right, I would be upset. I would be incomplete if I hadn’t done everything right. So she loaned me her trainer, who I can’t pronounce his last name. Brad is his name. He’s amazing. He works in Atlanta. Brad and I started training and then Brad hooked me up with his dietitian. His dietitian mainly does bodybuilding, that being Jeff. One of the noticeable things I was glad people noticed that my suit pants don’t fit anymore. A week before the Rumble, I slipped under 10% body fat for the first time in my career and I had come down from 240 as I had bulked up to 240. Yeah, daddy was eating first. I balked up to 240 and then I got under 10% a week before the Rumble and I was under 9.6% the day of the Rumble, but feeling healthy, still feeling good and happy to have done everything with Brian, with Jeff, and with Brad.”
“That team that Brandi loaned me and essentially pushed me towards, I’ll keep forever. I keep adding people to the Nightmare Family. We keep printing jackets. I keep adding people because your career becomes so big and special that you can’t call it your own anymore and I don’t want to call it my own. I have the greatest support group around me and I got to include DDP in that of course because he’s the pinnacle of health. He could be 150 years old and I wouldn’t know.”
On wrestlers taking better care of their bodies and making sure they heal from injuries correctly as compared to the previous generation:
“I think it’s probably the natural evolution because just like you’re watching with the NFL, and you’re watching all sports essentially, the speed of the game, our game, the wrestling has picked up. The danger and risk level has also clearly picked up. The top rope and high risk elements has picked up. To be able to execute, perform, compete, however you look at it, it is the natural evolution. You can’t in this day and age, and I think can’t is okay to say in this case, you can’t do it unless you’re really taking care of yourself.”
Cody Rhodes talking about his moment of frustration in his first run in WWE:
“Here’s his full story. I’m at the TV hotel. It’s a smaller market. We’re at a Best Western, which was the TV hotel shockingly, and I’m not knocking our Best Westerns out there people, but anyways, I’m at this Best Western and I’m sitting in a rental car with Brandi. It’s freezing because we were in Scranton. It’s freezing, freezing. We were outside and the crew bus was right in front of us. It had The Rock and it had the John Cena photo on it from the second Mania. So we’ve already seen this bus for over a year now. This story was encompassing really two years, this story from John versus Rock, the saga, and it was wonderful. But when you’re on the card, not close to that and at my level, I had been chipping away a little bit. Brass rings here and there. Brass rings here and there, but I hadn’t broken through by any means. I just got so tired of seeing their dang faces, and I love John. He was my role model in the business. He’s a rental car guy with me until he got a bus. As much as I did, I just was getting so upset and I told her that I can’t keep looking at the same guys. I can’t.”
“I got out of the car and I threw a Yoohoo glass bottle up against beautiful Dwayne Johnson’s face. There might have been somebody sleeping on this crew bus for all I knew. It shattered everywhere and I just stared at him, like I wanted to fight this giant head on the side of this bus. I remember telling her, you marry a wrestler, you’re marrying wrestling. As bad as this is, this is part of it. I gotta get this out, and getting it out for me ultimately would lead to me leaving was the only way I could get it out. It was pent-up. It was pent-up for too long.”
“You know, today you’ve got a medical team at WWE that includes mental health services. I’m not saying that I was deep down the rabbit hole, but it’s still so helpful to talk to somebody. You never want to lower yourself in front of your beloved, in front of your wife. That was one of the hardest things for me was being Stardust in front of Brandi. That was rough. When Brandi married Cody Rhodes, he was the Intercontinental Champion. He was wrestling Randy Orton every night and we were absolutely tearing the joints down. Next thing you know, I’m running around in this space outfit and trying to make the best of it, but I was very dead inside.”
“We were right near a critical mass because I remember the next conversation was, here’s what needs to happen, and what I said what needs to happen next, everyone told me not to do, but gotta bet on ourselves wherever we are and I needed to then.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit After The Bell with Corey Graves with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
