Cody Rhodes briefly comments on his departure from AEW.
Rhodes was one of the founders of AEW, and he served as one of its Executive Vice Presidents. “The American Nightmare” left the company in February 2022 and returned to WWE at WrestleMania 39.
The new Peacock documentary, American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes, is now streaming. In one highlight, Cody commented on his decision to leave AEW. He stated that he left the company due to a personal issue. (Clip courtesy of @Luke_Donakick)
“This is my one request in this entire documentary,” he said. “This one answer, I don’t want edited in any capacity. Don’t even edit this part. I can’t tell you why I left AEW. I can’t, and I won’t. But I’ll tell you the reasons that were said that didn’t actually matter. I didn’t leave AEW because of money, and I didn’t leave AEW because of other talents. I left AEW because of a personal issue. That’s it. But the byproduct of leaving AEW is the opportunity to go for the biggest dream I ever had and the first dream that I had in my life.”
The clip is available here:
In the same clip, WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H shared his thoughts on the situation and called AEW a secondary company.
“To then take that gamble again and say, ‘This is not what I wanted to be,'” he said. “I didn’t grow up dreaming of being the champion of the face of a secondary promotion. I wanted to be the WWE Champion.”
Cody Rhodes’ AEW Endgame
In a recent interview, Cody Rhodes discussed the endgame of his heel run in AEW. Speaking with Matthew Aguilar for ComicBook, he revealed that it probably would have been a match with Sting.
“I was going to wrestle Sting,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anybody and nothing was on paper or anything like that. But I can say I got a tremendous offer from AEW creatively, financially, the full package. You won’t hear me say anything bad about AEW or Tony (Khan) or my time there. It was a tremendous offer, but the offer wasn’t right for me.
“What I wanted to get back to was the first goal that I ever had (winning the WWE Championship). But yeah, that probably would’ve been the endgame. That’s what had been discussed, was to get one (match) with one of my heroes, Sting.”
Cody Rhodes will face Brock Lesnar at WWE SummerSlam. More information is available here.
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