Pharaoh, the white Siberian husky who became one of the most recognisable figures in wrestling without ever being in the business, has died. Cody Rhodes announced it in a long tribute on Instagram.
Rhodes built the post around one idea, which is that huskies need a job.
“P howled at the moon. When we thought he would be afraid of the older dogs we had, but instead ran into the living room and belly flopd’ on them. He patrolled the pool,” Rhodes wrote. “He always tore up a plant when a stranger came into the backyard to let them know, I’m crazy, and don’t come closer.”
He described the job Pharaoh gave himself before anyone assigned him one.
“He got the best training and retained most of it. I’d call him a crisis dog. Whenever there was a crisis, there he was,” Rhodes wrote. “He put his nose under my arm in the truck, every time. He was always with us, and when my world got turned upside down, he sat outside with me looking at the Texas stars until the sky started to shift and he pressed his head against me firmly in a way that let me know he understood.”
His summary of that was short. “It goes without saying, he was a good boy. My best man.”
Rhodes then went back to the weekend that turned the dog into a wrestling figure in his own right, the first All In and the first Starrcast convention in 2018.
“I’ll never forget him walking into the Hyatt in Schaumburg and us seeing the lobby overtaken by fans and wrestling shirts from front door to the back. We walked by the lobby bar and they had a special menu posted with Pharaoh’s fries,” Rhodes wrote. “But the thing I remember most is how the fans kinda parted the sea for him as he walked through. They snapped selfies and chanted his name like he was making an entrance on TV or something.”
He listed what followed: charity meet-and-greets for shelters around the country, a Mattel figure, a plush toy, a spot in WWE 2K24 and a run of merchandise. Pharaoh walked out with Rhodes at pay-per-views and appeared in backstage segments on both WWE and AEW television. Rhodes called him part of the Rhodes wrestling family and gave him a nickname, The Siberian Nightmare.
The ending of the post is about his daughter Liberty.
“I said huskies need a job, and I don’t think Pharaoh ever truly knew his. That is until Liberty was born,” Rhodes wrote. “I scrolled back through my old pictures and there he is with her, almost every early photo. He’s just peeking into frame, or right beside her, or sternly looking through the lens. His job was to be with her. Maybe he wanted to protect her.”
Rhodes has said before that he got the dog after watching Game of Thrones late one night and deciding he wanted a wolf pup, and he closed on that.
“It would be fitting to say your watch has ended, but I’d rather say the last thing I told you before you went to forever sleep,” he wrote. “You did your job. We love you.”
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Pharaoh was around 15. He stopped travelling with Rhodes after SummerSlam in Cleveland in August 2024, when Rhodes said the dog was 13, thriving but slowing down, and that the pack was staying home. Rhodes said at the time that Pharaoh had become more his daughter’s dog than his own. Before that, he had come through a cruciate ligament tear and surgery in 2020.
Rhodes has spoken publicly before about what the dog meant to him after Dusty Rhodes died in 2015, saying Pharaoh never left his side and comparing it to Ghost staying with Jon Snow. He told TV Insider in 2024 that Pharaoh was the best dog the family has had, and the dog was on WWE merchandise as recently as the Claim Your Kingdom shirt.
Randy Orton referenced Pharaoh in promos on the August 28 and September 4 episodes of SmackDown during the build to their match at Sunday Night’s Main Event. On the first, he asked whether the dog had died and whether Rhodes’ daughters had buried him. On the second he said the dog was not dead but did not have long. Orton beat Rhodes on Sunday in Atlanta.
