Cody Rhodes (@CodyRhodes) is a professional wrestler with WWE and the reigning WWE Undisputed Champion. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss winning the WWE Championship for a third time, welcoming his new daughter Leilani Ella, reacting to hearing boos from fans, his WrestleMania 42 match against Randy Orton, not being the fan favorite at WrestleMania 41 in his match with John Cena, the Codyvator spot in their SummerSlam rematch, being slapped by Travis Scott, how the infamous Cody Splash came to be, that tables match with The Big Show, and more!
I’m looking at the belt right now. It still has Drew McIntyre side plates. When do you get the American Nightmare side plates?
“I should have got them on Friday. I was just moving too quickly. I grabbed the title. I stayed a little bit after and I grabbed the title. You know how the West Coast shows, wrestlers love a West Coast show because they can get the red eye. I didn’t make my red eye, which is why I’m wondering why I was racing out of there, but I was. But as much as oil and water we might be, and fighting behind the scenes, fighting in the ring, all these things. You fight a guy long enough, I think you start to have a respect for him. I saw that with a lot of my dad’s opponents, with Tully, with Ric, and I’ve really come to, I don’t know what it is, respect his skill set and his body of work, for sure, but I almost want to take these off myself and give them to him. I don’t know if he’s ready for that right now, but I also don’t want it to feel petty or condescending. I just sincerely, a lot of times this stuff we collect, we forget to collect it, and then 10 years from now, somebody’s got your boots, or you want something for your kids and you don’t have it, but that might be a moment. I don’t mind having them for right now, still feels good.”
With everything you’ve done since coming back to WWE, has it occurred to you that your accomplishments have outdone your father’s accomplishments in WWE? Three-time WWE Champion, two-time Royal Rumble, winner, King of the Ring.
“I don’t think he’d mind me sharing this. Mr. Heyman told me that, and I thought he might be the one guy I believe it, because even when I’m by myself and doing one of these, I still don’t believe that, because I think Dusty’s legacy had such a final chapter that it still goes on today. I mean, they’re still doing things of his today, and there’s a whole fandom that will never even know they were his brainchild. This is a silly one, but for example, the cage lowering with the [music], that’s a Dusty thing. These production things are still in play. I appreciate you saying it. I think I have a lot more to do. But yeah, that’s really nice. I don’t know if I was ready for you to be so kind, not that you’re not kind, but that’s very nice.”
What more do you have to do?
“I’ll tell you something about King of the Ring. That’s one as a fan, I wanted that crown, and I don’t ride on the WWE charters anymore coming back from Saudi. Because after the King of the Ring, was probably the most partying I’ve ever done on a flight. Today, it’s pretty nebulous. You see Damian Priest running around in an Aquaman outfit and stuff like that, but I got photos with people I don’t even know. I’m arm wrestling Santos in one photo. My shirt is unbuttoned to like my navel. But all I remembered was that this would have been way cooler had I had the crown, because I emerged from the front of the plane with a crown on. But yeah, I had a good time.”
When you were Stardust, you were so deep into that character. How do we know you’re not in character now?
“I think the reason it haunted me is that I didn’t know the answer. It should be easy. Am I in character now? No. It should be easy. But is that a lie? Maybe. Because what is the character? Is the character who you were? Cody Runnells and Cody Rhodes, is there any real difference? Here’s the only thing I’ve kind of know, because the question still haunts me, and I still don’t have an answer. Here’s the only thing I’ve noticed, where I know when I’m not in character. I know I am not in character when I’m around my children. That I know for sure, I have nothing, I am not there to do anything other than be a father. That’s it. So that’s why I’m perplexed by the question. Maybe there’s other times.”
So if the story leading into WrestleMania 40 is doing what your dad never did, finishing the story. What was the story? Then the year after and the story now?
“Well, the biggest thing the year after that I wanted to do was it was more of I had talked a lot about what a WWE Championship reign with me looks like. Hey, we’re gonna bring back the Winged Eagle. That took a lot, and thanks to Triple H for saying sure.”
That came back for a night. Was there talk of making that the belt?
“I don’t think there was ever talk of making it the belt, but it was definitely only supposed to be there for one single night. Then the next thing you know, it’s hanging above the ring at the Royal Rumble, and there’s figures with it, which you know you’ve done something good there. Kevin Owens was carrying it into HQ, so I was really glad we got that. Also, this wasn’t a knock on the previous run, but it was hey, there’s going to be a lot of bell-to-bell wrestling here. I want to be defending this more frequently, and I want the matches to be a little bit less entertainment, a little bit more sports. Definitely both sports entertainment, but skew to the left. So here we go to France. We’ve got AJ Styles out of the gate. That’s a prime example of what I wanted it to look like, in terms of what that first reign would be. Somebody has asked me a question recently, ‘What is this one? What is number three for you?’ I wish I had an answer, but I think every wrestler, and it’s fun if you watch people who come on your podcast, who talk to you so frequently, do they find their identity? Do they change? Are you talking to different characters? I think for me, at this point, the prime of my career, I’d like it to really define who I am. I’m not so much worried about defining what the belt is to me. I’d like myself to be fully formed and fully defined. I think I’m there as far as the American Nightmare, what that is, and how I feel, but I’ll tell you an area that’s changing is I was never a polarizing wrestler. Now I’m a polarizing wrestler.”
How does that make you feel?
“That’s the thing. I’m honored by it. I’m honored by the passion of both sides of the coin. What I would like to do and to honor those who are so excited and those who are so not, however you’d put it, is I want to make sure that I’m not gotten to by it. I think with everything I’ve been through and everything in the business, you hear people say you got thick skin. I can definitely say I have thick skin now, because I used to not have thick skin.”
Are you trying to win that section of the audience over who maybe isn’t a fan of you being a champion right now, or who’s booing you at a show?
“I don’t want to say no, but there’s a really great line, you watch Rick and Morty? What does he say? He says something about, ‘I don’t care that you boo me, because I’ve seen what you cheer,’ and that is very much my approach often. I spoke about this recently with the big dude from Barstool, Brandon [Walker]. I spoke about that Leslie Knope Parks and Rec episode about bowling, where she spent so much time on the guy who was never going to vote for it in the first place. Unfortunately, you do that to discount your own, the people who are already there for you, but I don’t want to be against them either, if that makes any sense. I think John had it perfect, and watching John, having my own skin really, really beat up and thickened up over the course of my career has made it so that I think I’ve got the lane I can run in and make something very entertaining for both sides of the coin.”
At what point in that WrestleMania match with John Cena did you start to hear, oh my gosh, they’re booing me. They’re cheering him. It was almost like Rock vs. Hogan
“I remember every now and then you see fans say, ‘Turn the sound off when you watch it.’ I might have already said this on a podcast with you previously, and I’m always thinking, what? The sound is fans are in the ring with us. We are a live performance that interacts with our audience and plays off of what they are giving us. There is no sound off. Sorry, I feel strongly about that match. Bobby Roode is probably one of WWE’s absolute best assets. […] Bobby Roode has a couple of times come up to me and said, ‘Hey, it’s going to be an away game.’ That was because they show us now [arriving], we love doing these arrivals. I actually don’t mind it, because I could sit right there and go, Okay, great. It’s going to be one thing in Louisville, Kentucky, it might be a different thing in Las Vegas. Somebody said something to me recently, because you talk about, I don’t know if villain is the term, some people might think that’s who I already am. That might be that for them, I might not need to do any more. They might think, no, he’s a bad guy, I’m booing him, or he’s a good guy, I’m cheering him. But somebody said something, and they said it to me in a condescending fashion. They said it as an insult, but I didn’t take it as such, they called me golden boy. I loved it. Here’s why I loved it. If you’re new to the game and you’re watching now, I think you can get away with saying that. If you have followed this for more than 5 years, or more than 10, you know that’s not how it started. So I’m not mad at that little statement. You know that I wasn’t even able to walk down the ramp at my first WrestleMania, we went side ramp for the battle royal. That’s a denotation and little nickname that I did not take in a negative fashion, even though it was delivered as such.”
At what point during that WrestleMania 41 match did you start to hear the crowd was not on your side?
“It’s the difference with hearing them. Stadiums are always tough to hear because that noise does go up. It’s the difference between hearing them and the best way to put it is feeling them. I started feeling them in my rib cage, really, on the old school intros. I love that they’re there for a fight. You get the classic when Michael Cole or Joe Tess or Stu or Corey, or when any of these guys can say a big fight feel, and it actually is a big fight feel that’s amazing. You’ll get that with both WrestleMania main events.”
John Cena talked about how the match that you guys did at SummerSlam had to be different, had to deliver, because the WrestleMania match he felt didn’t. How did you put that match together at SummerSlam?
“Well, I never was one to get mad or get in my feelings over WrestleMania 41 because it was part of a larger story. That is a hard sell, though, for a WrestleMania, especially when the year before you had the completion of over several decades of a journey, and at a 10-year Mania, you’re involving luminaries and legends. It’s a feeling that’s good, a good feeling, as Shawn Michaels will say, the good stuff. So when you go into 41 and you’re doing 1/4 of your story, and you know your story goes all the way to SummerSlam, I never was not committed, and I never doubted John. I hope he knows that, because I know he talks about this match, so I feel comfortable talking about it, but I never doubted, hey, well, this is what we’re doing now, and this is what we’re going to do, then this is what we’re going to do when we get to SummerSlam. You asked, though, how we put it together. I have a really great photo of how we put it together in the most old-school fashion ever. He wanted to have a cigar where he was staying in New York, and this was the night before. I figured I like cigars, it is one of my favorite things, maybe the most Cuban thing about me. I went there, and I realized after dinner and stuff, maybe an hour in, that we were talking about tomorrow. But we were just talking about it differently than you talk about it at the ringside area. We were talking about it, then we would talk about something else, and then we’d slip back into it, and it was the most I think I’ve ever focused in my mind. Because once we go past something, I don’t want to forget it. Remember that idea, I don’t want to forget it. So I ended up going to my hotel that night, and I had it all. I had everything, and I kept making sure. I think I was telling Brandi, and I was making sure I had it. I had what we had talked about. Because with an old school guy like him, you may actually go out there the next night without seeing each other, which is wild in 2025-26. But with John, that was a possibility. He could have just yelled his whole version of it, or I could have yelled my whole version. But that was a really special moment, because I got a lot of pictures from it, and I didn’t share any except maybe one of us signing at the tables. But I got to be with my friend at the end, and I got to not just be with my friend, but I got to have the responsibility that I think anyone in the business would want. I got the responsibility of being booed in Vegas. I got that responsibility of being the one who can survive. Hey, yeah, you may not be the hot thing right now, but if you’re going to be QB 1, you have to be able to survive, and I got to be able to be in there with the guy who survived more encounters than anybody in our business with split crowds, for him crowds and hostile crowds.”
How did you guys come up with the Codyvator with John Cena coming up?
“I don’t want to tell you whose idea it was, but I can say this, there’s a guy backstage who runs Gorilla. Shout out to him, Temarrio. He does not like the Codyvator. I like that he calls it the Codyvator, because we could easily just call it a lift like it’s denoted in a production budget. But he doesn’t like the Codyvator, because the Codyvator is pretty expensive, and if we’re only going to use it for me to come up and I prefer it’s only me. But I joked with him a lot that, hey, look, dude, we’re getting bang for your buck here, two uses of the Codyvator, and it made him feel better about the use of it that night. So yeah, I’ll go ahead and credit Triple H for that one, easiest one to credit for it, but that was fun. Also, you can tell how strong a man really is when you’re going at a tiny, incremental pace and the floor is lifting you, and still had me, and I think wanted to carry me 70 yards, but didn’t need to. I can fall off your shoulders at a certain point. He’s still got it. John, certainly, all the functional strength, and you’ve seen all the hard knocks videos and all that, that’s never gonna go away.”
This WrestleMania with Randy Orton, does this one feel so much different than all the other WrestleManias you’ve main evented?
“I would say it’s very champagne problems. This is a conversation that’s been brought up a lot as far as what would I have done had I not won the championship back from Drew? I don’t know, and I think it’s a bit scary to me. Because ok, WrestleMania 39 main event, SoFi, sets a record. WrestleMania 40, 2 main events, right where my Eagles played, sets records. Then last year, Allegiant Stadium. I don’t know. I wish I had a plan B. I would have come up with one, and I would have been motivated, and this place certainly gets all of me so I would have been able to dig in. But I think looking at WrestleMania this year, and I said it incorrectly. I said sleeper Mania, which would imply that people are sleeping on it, and that’s not what I meant. What I think you’re going to get from this year’s WrestleMania is you have two main events with Roman and Punk for the World Heavyweight Championship and myself and Randy, and the show that’s filling out with Stephanie and Liv and the show that you’re seeing kind of come together, because these matches are starting to become obvious what they are. I think bell to bell, you’re going to get one of the better Manias ever, and I really, really like being part of that WrestleMania.”
So, what’s the story behind the Cody splash?
“Well, a couple of things. People love to watch the table get broken. There’s only so many ways you can break a table. I don’t like setting the table up in the corner. I think that’s lame. You got to break the table. You got to break the actual table. Legs need to be down. We were scrambling for something to do in a contract signing at some point in my career, and I thought, hey, why don’t I just splash you off the top rope and keep the pen and the contract in my hand? There’s something fun about that. Plus, people love a table breaking. They’re chanting, ‘We want tables.’ By God, give them the tables. Then what would come of it is on the live events, which are no longer intimate and just for that crowd, because people will film something they saw that night and it’s out there. My splash from the live event started to make it out, and that is just a prime example of you don’t always see your age, and then maybe you see your age. So I think I’m at the prime of my career. I think I’m psychologically the best I’ve ever been. As an athlete, believe it or not, even with that splash, I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been. However, I have committed to the idea of the Splash is a non-jump splash, it’s a fall splash. I like to get straight as a board. I like to really get out like a tree frog being flung from a tree. The one overseas, in Germany, was so high up, the idea that I would jump is insane. So now we just call it at TV lovingly, the New Jack splash, where I just fall. So there’s no splash involved. It’s just going to be a fall. But yeah, it started as the idea people love a table, let’s do this at this contract signing. What could we do? Oh, we could do this, and then we could grab your hand, and it would be a thing, but it’s developed into the New Jack splash, and I have no shame with it at all, because people do seem to enjoy it. They do. That is not a showcase of my athleticism. That’s not the one I would put my hat on athleticism over, this is just my splash and how I do it, and it’s become part of my repertoire now. So you know, if I go up there, don’t expect me to jump. I’ll be falling.”
How badly were you hurt after Elimination Chamber last year in Toronto? How badly did Travis Scott hurt you?
“Travis Scott did not hurt me. It looks like he hurt me. I took a photo with Travis Scott at the OBB studio event, and I never saw that photo. I like Travis Scott. I think it’s safe to say at this point, I like Travis Scott. I like that he lended us his time and that we had moments with him. I mean, he took a Cross Rhodes. Most people just remember the slap, and I’m going to be on this side of history with it. I know it wasn’t everyone’s favorite thing. That is not the hardest I’ve ever been slapped. That’s number three. That’s number three. I’ll give you the list of slaps. Number two, Bob Holly in London. He says, ‘Fire up out there, kid.’ I don’t want to say something nefarious that gets anyone in trouble. I think someone told him to try and knock me out, because the way he slapped me was trying to knock a man out, it didn’t. I have a decent little jaw. So I took said slap. The number one might shock you, but I felt it in both of my heels. I felt it in my feet. I had to plant my feet. It was so hard. Nattie Neidhart hit me. It felt like an MLB batter swinging the bat, and I walked into it. She leveled me. So Nattie is one, Hardcore Holly two, Travis Scott, I’d say maybe three.”
But was that a legit black eye from Travis Scott?
“I’m gonna say that John Cena and The Rock gave me the black eye, and Travis Scott was there as well. So the three of them gave me the black eye and the perforated eardrum. Also, it runs. If you get anything up here, right? So if I like, dot you up here, it’s gonna run. Some people are quick healers too. I’m like, a real yellowy, gross healer, where it just takes forever. So, yeah, it was not the worst slap I ever got, and he took a great Cross Rhodes.”
How long have you been waiting to use that Raheem line in a promo?
“It came up randomly. I was never, ever going to touch it, as I probably shouldn’t. I was never going to touch it. I think I’ve kind of expressed this. I felt like there was this natural, sometimes people watch the show and they’re watching and they’re just entertained, and they don’t tweet about it and they don’t post about it. Other times, there’s people watching more from the they’re deeply invested, and they’re invested in the behind-the-scenes nature of it, and we have Unreal. This is all our own design, right? I think there was some more on the latter side, who thought he’s got to reply to what CM Punk and Roman had said about the WWE Championship or about the A show. He’s got to reply to that. I wanted to make it very clear I was not going to be replying to that. I’m not going to spend my time heading towards WrestleMania in Allegiant Stadium, talking seriously about that, so that was my way around it. Hey, if we’re going to make this measuring contest, well, I didn’t get this nickname for no reason, and I stand by it. I stand by what I said. I stand by it. I am actually glad, though, because we could have kept going as far as the next thing you know, Punk could be out there. That’s not what we needed. I needed a one-and-done on this little bit, and here’s something funny about it, though, I chose to say that on the night that I debuted a youth kids t-shirt. I am wearing the kids t-shirt when I said it, so my hypocrisy was on full display. The first time ever WWE said, this is the youth only line, because we had a lot of kids who wanted the Nightmare stuff and not the skulls, so I needed to wear it. But that also was the night I said that. So again, my hypocrisy on full display. I’m a complicated man.”
How much longer do you think you want to do this?
“I don’t have a number on it anymore. I know that the next deal I do will be my last as far as a full-time wrestler. Sometimes, when you take things, and I think I’m doing this right now, and you use them to your advantage where you’re like, I need to do this for this, but really it might be for you. We talked about Liberty earlier. She’s known nothing but WrestleMania main events. She literally thinks what I do for a living is WrestleMania. That’s what I do for a living. Leilani is only six months old, so in my mind, I owe her a few more of these. That’s silly. That’s me doing it for me, or maybe it is a little bit of both. I’ll know, and you know who else will know? The audience. They’ll know. I don’t even know if the kids say this anymore, washed. I’ll know, because your mind is your greatest asset as a pro wrestler. I was a big Hogan fan through every era, but if you look back at Hogan in black and white, Hollywood Hogan, a master just up here in terms of the psychology of a live audience and what they came to play with and my dad said something on commentary once that absolutely pulled my heart into my stomach. It just hit me so hard. But he was talking about Hogan, and this is the middle of deep kayfabe. He’s talking about Hogan, he said, ‘No man has captured the imagination of the audience like that guy.’ I thought that’s what I want to do. They came here for something, and if they’re booing, they came here to boo. If they’re cheering, they came here. I want to capture their imagination the best I can, and you can when you have the experience I have. And again, got to wrestle my angel on my shoulder last year, and John Cena gets to wrestle the devil on my shoulder this year in Randy Orton. If I can’t do anything with that, well then I’m a real dick. You know what I’m saying? I’m sorry, if I can’t do anything with that, then I’m selfish, then I’m not here to give back to the industry, so I need to do that as well. But you’ll know, you’ll know.”
The Tables match with Big Show where he steps through the table on the outside. What was supposed to happen in that match?
“That.”
That was it? Because the look on his face sells it perfectly.
“Yeah, that’s what was supposed to happen. It almost didn’t happen because I did a disaster kick off the table in the corner, and it did a slight like that, and I realized, oh, this was so dumb. I could have reversed the finish because I tried to do the same thing he’s doing in a second that 100% is the thing that’s supposed to happen. I don’t mind if people don’t believe that, and I don’t mind if people are still caught up in the suspension of disbelief. But that is it, and his face is accurate, because that happened to him frequently with chairs. I was in The Big Texan with him in Amarillo when he sat in a chair at the end of the table, and it exploded. Now you have to get off the ground. Now they have to get you another chair. It’s a whole thing. That was something that was happening in his life. He is a legit giant, one of the people I learned the absolute most from. But that is what was supposed to happen. There was someone who said, ‘This is not going to work,’ and then he was so happy to tell them when he came to the back, ‘Oh, it worked!’ Then he beat me up pretty bad after, though. I remember, we went from a funny haha moment to the I do kind of a whirly bird into a table on the outside that was rough. When I get up, you can tell that was a rough bump.”
What is Cody Rhodes grateful for?
“My family, WWE giving me this platform, and the algorithm.”
Please support our sponsors:
HELIX SLEEP: Flash sale! Go to https://helixsleep.com/cvv for 27% off sitewide!
COZY EARTH: Go to https://cozyearth.com/CVV for up to 20% off!
AMERICAN FINANCING: NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.196% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-721-3300 for details about credit costs and terms or visit https://americanfinancing.net/Chris
BEAM: Go to https://shopbeam.com/INSIGHT and use code INSIGHT for up to 40% off Beam’s Dream Powder
DELETEME: Use the code INSIGHT to get 20% off your DeleteMe plan at https://joindeleteme.com/INSIGHT
FACTOR: Get 50% off your first box, plus Free Breakfast for 1 Year with the code INSIGHT50OFF at https://factormeals.com/INSIGHT50OFF
PURE PLANK: The future of core fitness! Use the code CVV to save 10% on Pure Plank designed by Adam Copeland & Christian: https://gopureplank.com/cvv
SEAT GEEK: Use my code for 10% off your next SeatGeek order*: https://seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/CVV Sponsored by SeatGeek. *Restrictions apply. Max $20 discount
NORDVPN: Exclusive deal! https://nordvpn.com/cvv Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee!
PRIZEPICKS: Download the PrizePicks app today and use code INSIGHT to get $50 bonus credit in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup!