Ahead of Saturday’s WWE Royal Rumble PLE, SHAQ Wrestling’s Shakiel Mahjouri spoke with Cody Rhodes.
Cody Rhodes on his feeling when he saw himself on the cover of the WWE 2K24 video game:
“I’m very picky. This is gonna sound silly, but I’m really picky about photos. I worked for a company in Japan that would just take these awful photos and the next thing you know you’d be plastered on a 7-Eleven wall. I’m terrified of bad photos so that’s always the first thing that comes to mind is, ‘I wonder what they’re going to use? I wonder how it’s going to be captured?’ When I saw it, I was really blown away. I was really touched by just how much they captured the shoot itself and the fun and the grandeur of WWE in 2K, so all positive feelings.”
Cody was asked what it would mean to him if WrestleMania 40 comes and goes and he’s still not the champion:
“Well, I feel like I don’t look at it from that perspective in terms of what would happen if I didn’t get to the finish line because ultimately that’s a failure. It will be a failed year and I hope that doesn’t come to pass.”
Cody on if the story needs to be finished at WrestleMania 40 or could it be sooner or later than that:
“I feel like it could happen before, it could happen after, but I think it’s all the sweeter if it was to happen at WrestleMania. Last year was about the title, the championship itself, and then the way the match unfolded and being, you know, this close to the moment. That made it now a far more personal situation, so I love it to be at WrestleMania. No doubt, you never know with WWE. The flow here is quite wild, but I think the story that has been told throughout my whole career, the story that’s been told since the late 70s with my father and the WWWF championship, all of that, I don’t think anyone is looking to step in and hinder that in any ways, just because it’s been the leading story we’ve had, and it’s been a real story, and when it’s real, it’s the best.”
On the role he’s played in redefining the wrestling industry:
“I think as I grow old, I’ll probably wax poetic and grow even fonder of the things I was able to be part of, the people I was able to team with when we were a group, the Bullet Club, The Elite, the idea was ‘Change the world’, and we really did actually change at least our world. It’s so healthy now. I think all of us are very careful to talk about it because nobody wants it to look like they’re saying, ‘Hey, it was all me’, but the reality is I can name, it’s about eight people and if one of them wasn’t there, it wouldn’t have happened. An alternative wouldn’t exist. It wouldn’t have spring-boarded me into this position I am now. None of it would have happened. It was all these factors and the biggest factor being the fans themselves. So, I just hope people remember it. You know, selfishly I joke about this with Matt and Nick all the time. selfishly you want more people to remember it was something that we did, but I’m just happy to see an industry that I grew up watching through the good times and the bad times is now as popular as it ever was.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit SHAK Wrestling (Shakiel Mahjouri) with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Quotes were transcribed by Jim for WrestlingNews.co.
