When Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow showed up at training camp to hopefully lead his team back to the Super Bowl sporting a new bleached-blond look, more than a few fans were left with the same thought: oh snap, he looks like WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
Now granted, Rhodes isn't the first prominent figure in the sports or entertainment sphere to sport bleached-blond hair, as his image is not only inspired by his father, Dusty Rhodes, but also action heroes like Dolph Lungren, but considering the âAmerican Nightmareâ is the current WWE Champion, has a skin in Modern Warfare 3, and is a bit of a meme in his own right, fans have been having fun with the comparison, going so far as to put the grappler's signature neck tattoo on the former LSU QB.
One such personality who is 100 percent in on the joke? That would be Rhodes himself, who took to social media to throw his hat into the meme game.
Man, call Rhodes corny if you'd like, but you've gotta admit, he hit that one out of the park.
While Rhodes has finished his story in 2024, Burrow is still gunning for his own legacy-making moment, with the former first overall pick coming four points away from winning the Super Bowl at the end of the 2022 NFL season. If Burrow can return to his MVP-caliber form this fall after an ugly 2023 campaign plagued with injury, who knows, maybe he'll be able to âFinish the Storyâ in February of next spring, too, which, coincidentally enough, comes with a custom WWE Championship belt with his team's logo on the sideplates. If that happens, don't be surprised if WWE sends a certain âAmerican Nightmareâ to Ohio to present the star passer with the belt himself.
Cody Rhodes is proud of his Road to WrestleMania 40
Speaking of finishing the story, Cody Rhodes recently sat down with one of his closest allies in professional wrestling, Diamond Dallas Page, to discuss his road to WrestleMania 40, his program with The Bloodline, and his ultimate win over Roman Reigns at the âShowcase of the Immortals.â
While the build-up to said match is so legendarily complicated that WWE literally released a documentary to try to set the record straight in a way that left every party in a favorable light â even if it turned Dwayne âThe Rockâ Johnson into a massive meme â in the end, Rhodes wouldn't change a thing, as he ultimately came out on top and secure what he wanted all along.
âI know we could have made anything work in any direction we took it, however, I feel like if I had to do this all over again, I wouldnât want anything to change. The story was different in terms of it wasnât as simple as comes back to WWE, wins WWE Championship. There was things that needed to happen, individuals I needed to be in the ring with, people I needed to be around,â Cody Rhodes told DDP via Fightful.
âAlso, the WWE audience, the wrestling audience, I have nothing but positive things to say about the fans ever. I canât find a negative in anything that they do. But they didnât have to respond to me the way that they did. You can set the booking or the matches that youâre in or the TV time that you get, these things weâre trying to lead the audience, but they couldâve fully rejected me. Hereâs this guy, he went off and started his own company, he was real bitter about how he left, midcard, jobber, all of this, they really couldâve gone a different way with it, and that wasnât the case. Somebody asked me at Mania, why do you think [theyâve stuck with you] and the only thing I could tell them was that I think it resonated with them, my story is a real story. Wrestling is a suspension of disbelief, but when itâs real, itâs just the best.â
From winning the Royal Rumble, to handing over his spot, to starting a grassroots campaign to win his main event match, and then pushing The Rock to turn heel and become the âFinal Boss,â Rhodes went through the absolute ringer to get to a pair of main event matches at WrestleMania 40, not to mention securing the W versus Reigns when it mattered most. Even if the path was winding and there were enough turns to make Alfred Hitchcock blush, in the end, all's well that ends well for Rhodes and his âLittle Nightmaresâ around the world.