When AEW declined Cody Rhodes' option in 2022, effectively allowing him to negotiate with any wrestling company, fans openly wondered if WWE would make a hard push at their former employee.

Sure Rhodes had become somewhat of a middling presence in the TNT Championship scene, and his unwillingness to turn heel made him a heel with fans of AEW, but he was a founder of the promotion, an EVP, and already saw what happened in WWE when the promotion feel out of love with a wrestler.

Would he really consider going back? Well, according to Nick Khan in an appearance on The Bill Simmons Podcast, the decision was actually incredibly easy, as Rhodes was locked up in on a new deal that was “done in minutes.”

“You sort of saw him fade out over there. And it's something that we talked about at WWE, like, ‘This is interesting.' It used to be, ‘This (AEW) is about the wrestlers, this is about empowering the wrestlers, Cody's one of the co-founders,' and then that narrative shifted, and that's when we decided, when we knew contractually we could make the call, to make the call, and say, ‘Hey, why don't we get together and have a conversation,” Nick Khan said via WrestleTalk.

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“The deal was done in minutes, and boom, he returned at WrestleMania 2022 just three years ago. And a year later was in the main event at WrestleMania 2023… He doesn't talk a lot of sh*t (about AEW) which is something I admire about him.”

Welp, there you go, folks; while fans knew that Rhodes was feeling a return to WWE, where they would push him like a true babyface hero, most thought the decision was a bit more complex than it appears to have been, with a visit from Vince McMahon needed to really take it home. While Khan may be spinning a narrative ever so slightly to keep Mr. McMahon's name out of the conversation, it's also possible that the deal really did come together in no time and any thoughts of a deep conversation or back-and-forth negotiations were simply a ruse to make it seem more amicable than the situation really was.