Cody Rhodes came up short of beating Roman Reigns at WWE WrestleMania 39 when challenging for the Undisputed WWE Universal Title. It was a shocking finish, as many had thought he was going over.
It was known for a while among those in the know that Rhodes wouldn’t win. This is something he discussed while appearing on My Mom’s Basebasement. Here are the highlights.
WrestleMania 39 being bittersweet:
“I’m in the ring, and they’ve left Romans up the ramp. I hear the pyro. It’s the shot you’ve seen. But in my mind, I didn’t know how close he was. And I was just sitting there with my hands draped across my knees. And you can see me telling myself I verbally told myself to get up. And the only thing I learned from being a WrestleMania main event and I know everybody was like, Oh my gosh, the WrestleMania main event, hardest match to get into. Oh, your dad never did that. All that stuff. The only thing I learned was, Well, you gotta get back. Yeah, I got to get back and. And I got to win. I can’t. I can’t call it. I got to win. And that was…I mentioned that to Sam, but bittersweet. I mean, more bitter than anything. The only thing I was trying to do was look at as many fans as I could and let them know, going to be okay. Yeah. You had a great time, right, guys? This didn’t end the way we thought, but you had a good time, and it did. It was a very tense, awkward, cold feeling at WrestleMania 39. So it opens up opportunities for WrestleMania 40, perhaps to be a different feeling.”
Not watching his matches back:
“If someone asked me specifically to watch it back, I will. I’ll watch it back. Or if I blew something. Like if I knew something stunk. Yeah. Then I’ll watch it back to see what you were thinking. What were you doing? What happened here? But if it’s if you’re feeling it, whether it’s you’re under or you’re over, if you’re feeling it in that moment of something I learned from Shawn Michaels, you really don’t need to watch it back. You don’t really need to. It was magic. Yeah, And it’s the same when guys come back. How was it? How was it? Usually, if it was for me, I describe everything in baseball terms. That was a double. That was a triple. But when it’s a home run like we don’t need, there’s no conversation. We need to have like that was a home run. That’s a that’s how I look at everything. And for Mania, I didn’t want to watch it back, not because of how it ended, but also because my family was in the front row and I don’t know if I can take looking at their faces. They were filming them as much as they were filming me. I don’t know if I want to see my mom go through that, especially with how excited she was to be there. But yeah, I haven’t watched it back.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit My Mom’s Basebasement with an h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.