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If you've seen a commercial advertising for the new Peacock documentary American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes, you might recall seeing Kevin Owens declare, “Vince McMahon flew to his house to get him back, not many people can say they did that.” Now, for savvy wrestling fans, this conversation was common knowledge, as let's just say WWE put in the full-court press to steal the “Grandson of a Plummer” away from AEW, but the exact extent of the conversation largely remained a mystery… until now.
That's right, while out on the promotional tour to raise awareness for his new documentary, Rhodes was asked about the conversation by Chris Van Vliet on Insight and finally revealed how his talk with Mr. McMahon inspired his return to the company.
“That’s a good question, I think he laughed. I think he laughed because I kind of snuck in, I leaned over him. I remember going in to talk to him, I wasn’t afraid of anything, and I was overcompensating almost. I’m not scared of anything; let’s talk. I was almost overcompensating because both Vince and Bruce were so welcoming; this is the term I can use, sweet,” Cody Rhodes said via Fightful.
“[They were] so positive about what I had done, the fact that they had known what I had done and were citing different things like, ‘I saw this, I saw this.’ I couldn’t believe it, it was very self-affirming, and it just went for that type of happy go lucky… we’re talking about Liberty, who was a year old, and he’s talking to me about what it’s like to be a dad for a daughter and how special it is and in the last twenty seconds of the meeting, ‘Oh, Seth Rollins at WrestleMania,’ that’s the only business that came up. I told Brandi I would say this, but I was adamant about saying please don’t do one of those, ‘Hey, this is the deal, if you leave it’s off the table.’ Don’t do one of those. I have to leave and think about it, I have to. Even in your mind, it’s like, ‘Yup, I think we’re gonna do that.’ But I have to think about it and take some time because we had made such massive decisions, so this one was going to be something similar. But it was special, didn’t feel like a meeting until maybe the last thirty seconds.”
Did Mr. McMahon put on the charm to get Rhodes back in WWE, or was his plan all along to, in his words, #FinishTheStory in the company that employed his father? We may never know, but the results have been about as good as one could have imagined.
Cody Rhodes has a very interesting opinion of people who trash his suits.
As you may or may not have noticed, Cody Rhodes likes to wear suits when he isn't in his wrestling gear, a fact that made AEW fans very upset during his run but has been embraced much more by fans in WWE.
Discussing his decision to dress the way he does on the Sports Illustrated Media podcast with Jimmy Traina, Rhodes noted that, while his fashion choices did become somewhat performative in AEW, fans who disliked it have a certain type of energy that he doesn't appreciate.
“So it went from this is presentation, this is gimmick to well, I’m their boss, so I want to have a standard of look. I want to have an appearance that will make people think if everything’s falling apart, dude in the suits got it. He knows, hey, if this meeting is going wrong, if this pitch is not landing, I could handle it. I was always doing media as well during that period,” Rhodes said via WrestleZone.
“And that’s the first period when I was in AEW, where suits started to make certain people uncomfortable. And you’ll hear some podcasts out there that they just can’t wrap their head around the suit like, ‘Why? You’re supposed to be a babyface. Why are you in the suit?’ The moment that suits started making people uncomfortable? It’s all I ever wanted to wear. It really is because if this makes you uncomfortable, something’s wrong with you.
“I feel good. I want to show up here and be the best dressed and present myself in the most classy way I possibly can. How does it affect you? And it was real, the kids say — I can’t use the term, but it’s like I want to say the most little penis energy thing I’ve ever heard is when people are mad that I wear suits. Okay? It doesn’t affect you.”
Is Rhodes' assertion correct? Well, excluding the anatomical identification of an energy, fans pretty much hated everything about Rhodes' babyface character at the end of his AEW run, going so far as to famously throw back his belt at the Target Center in Minnesota. Fortunately, it would appear Rhodes found an audience that appreciated his efforts much more, and sometimes, that's all that really matters.
