Who Does Cody Rhodes Think He Is?

On January 19th, Cody Rhodes walked to the ring and addressed the fans directly with a promo that confused most fans. Rhodes was about to drop the TNT Title to Sammy Gueverra but his promo almost had nothing to do with the upcoming match and everything to do with his own personal relationship with the fans and with AEW.

Fast forward a month and Cody is leaving the brand he built and is expected to rejoin the WWE. These are the stories that force me to write about wrestling. This shit is fascinating.

Rhodes has always been fully aware of his own legacy. I suppose there’s some pun in there since he was a member of the faction called Legacy in 2008 with Randy Orton and Ted DiBiase Jr all based around their parents being professional wrestlers before them.

The son of The American Dream Dusty Rhodes and the brother of Goldust, Cody was The Prince That Was Promised but his WWE career never really made it past the middle of the card before he and the company broke up in 2016.

In his departure from WWE, Rhodes spent the next 5 and half years turning himself into the main eventer and big-money draw that Vince McMahon was incapable of turning him into which brings me back to his last AEW promo.

Rhodes went to the ring and celebrated CM Punk for his famous ‘pipebomb’ that rejuvenated the wrestling world. CM Punk finally spoke honestly about the state of the WWE as well as breaking the 4th wall and mentioning the existence of other wrestling promotions around the world as well as top wrestlers in other promotions like the Young Bucks.

Punk’s point was that he is irreplaceable within WWE and if the company wasn’t going to treat him as such, he was going to take over the Indy scene. But Punk didn’t do any of that. WWE didn’t value him and Punk simply retired.

But you know who literally did all of the things Punk mentioned in his Pipebomb? Cody Rhodes.

Cody went to Ring of Honor and won the championship. He went to New Japan Wrestling and won the championship. He joined the Bullet Club, the single biggest faction in professional wrestling where he would join forces with his future AEW business partners, Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks.

He had the vision to take the Bullet Club and move them to America to start a brand new promotion that could compete with WWE. In 2019, AEW debuted and it was the biggest deal in professional wrestling. You can say it’s because Chris Jericho left WWE and joined them. You can say American audiences wanted to see Kenny Omega for the first time. But at the end of the day, the reason we cared about AEW is because Cody Rhodes, the son of the American Dream, was attached.

Sooooo let’s look at that promo one last time. With rumors that Cody was losing creative control to Tony Khan and that he wasn’t going to get the money he wanted on his new contract, that promo hits differently now.

What started as praise for CM Punk now looks like anger. Cody Rhodes was the ultimate company man. Making sure he didn’t write himself into the world title picture. He spent most of his time putting over younger guys and helping build new stars. He did everything right. And was still booed by the fans.

He created a place successful enough for CM Punk to want to come out of retirement and compete full-time there but he couldn’t get the money Punk received. He couldn’t get the cheers Punks gets even though Punk quit on them and Rhodes busted his ass to become the better version of him.

CM Punk preached about how much he hated the industry. Well, Rhodes actually did something about it.

If you saw the news about Cody leaving AEW to rejoin WWE and you rolled your eyes at his lack of loyalty or his own self-importance, take a step back and realize he created the current wrestling landscape and the company he helped build has treated him like, well, the way WWE treated Rhodes a decade ago.

Everyone go get the biggest bags you can. Let’s celebrate what Cody has done for wrestling because he’s about 3 weeks away from wearing Goldust makeup and getting 13 seconds of screen time on Monday Night Raw.