When Cody Rhodes left AEW in January of 2022 for what would eventually become his shining return to WWE at WrestleMania 38, it changed his perception among professional wrestling fans forever.

Sure, Rhodes will forever go down as a multi-time TNT Champion and a face of early AEW, but he only wrestled for the big belt once, with performers like Jon Moxley and even CM Punk lapping him from a production standpoint, and his spot at the top of the card filled by the likes of MJF, Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay since his exit. Still, with his WWE run shaking out as it has, the days of the “Disruptor,” a castaway Superstar who built a challenger to battle the company that once rejected him, are long gone, with the “American Nightmare” effectively becoming the very thing he rebelled against when AEW stared out: a company man.

Discussing his exit from AEW in about the same level of detail fans have become accustomed to in an interview with Chris Van Vliet on Insight, Rhodes let it be known that he understands why some fans of the promotion cast him as a villain and accept that designation because of his respect for the promotion.

“I don't know if I consider it the high road. Maybe it is. How could I not, right? How [my run in] AEW ended was terrible, really. People are gonna write books later on, and these stories are gonna get out there, and then it's gonna be a whole new ballgame. But the actual experience and everything we did… I could never…. you ever seen the end of ‘The Dark Knight'? I think that's, it's super convoluted, and I'm not comparing myself to Batman, but there's a piece of it that's really important. To certain fans from the AEW fandom, they need the story to be [that] they didn't want me, they pushed me out. They need, ‘He was bad,' they need that story. They need me to be the villain,” Cody Rhodes told Chris Van Vliet via TJR.

“I was always fine with accepting that because of the respect I have for it in the first place. How difficult it was to do the original All In, how unbelievable the feeling was to do Double or Nothing, how fortunate we were that Tony [Khan] wanted to invest in this vision, and he has a vision as well. How special Matt and Nick [Jackson] and the BTE era and Kenny [Omega] and my rivalry in New Japan, especially from a dollars and cents point, that made New Japan more money than they ever did, and it made Ring of Honor go through the roof at the time. So regardless of any petty squabbles, I will always have a love for it. I got to wrestle Brodie Lee's final match. I got to lead people, young people, behind the scenes. I'll always have a love for it. So I'm sure there's some negative stuff, but I just remember it lovingly.”

Is Rhodes a villain for doing what was right for him and his family? No. Did Rhdoes get creative with his contractual situation in order to become a free agent when he did, allowing him to negotiate with Vince McMahon and WWE ahead of Mania? Yes, yes he did, and while some fans may hate him for it, it's hard to argue he made the wrong decision, as he ultimately got everything he wanted out of professional wrestling and convinced WWE he was a top guy, even if he had to jump through some serious hoops to get there.

Cody Rhodes has one issue with the Young Bucks' AEW origin story

Elsewhere in his interview with Chris Van Vliet, Cody Rhodes reflected on the origin story of AEW as told in the Young Bucks book, “Killing The Business,” which noted that he was the last member of The EVPs to sign with the promotion after the Jackson brothers and Kenny Omega.

While this narrative is technically true – he did sign last – the way it has been explained doesn't sit right with Rhodes, as he believes it diminishes his contributions to the promotion's origins.

“I hated that in The Young Bucks' book, they said I was last to the signing. Because that's a big thing. Some of the AEW defenders who don't realize they're turning people off to their product more than they're turning people on, that's one of the things that people always cite ‘Oh, he was last, he wasn't that big a deal to the origin,'” Cody Rhodes said via TJR.

“No, this guy here who's off camera was the first person to ever meet Tony and he met him in a vetting process for all of us. So yes, I guess I was the last and yes, I had different thoughts and it's not incorrect at all what they said [that I was the last person to sign]. Yeah, it's not incorrect but I was just as in on it as well as anybody else. That's a little thing that when I write my book I get to tell [the story].”

Is this all semantic? Eh, maybe a little, but frankly, what is professional wrestling if not a narrative-driven sport? Even if the Young Bucks didn't mean their writing in a malicious way, it's clear Rhodes would like to clear things up at some point in the future when he writes a book of his own, which, considering everything that's happened over the last half-decade, is sure to be one of the touchstone pieces of professional wrestling text heading into the future.