Cody Rhodes recently appeared as a guest on the “After the Bell with Corey Graves” podcast for an in-depth interview covering his WWE comeback, which included a Royal Rumble victory in his first night back, securing his spot in one-half of the WrestleMania 39 main event.
During the discussion, “The American Nightmare” reflected back on his previous run in WWE, detailing when he started feeling “dead inside.”
Featured below are some of the highlights.
On his frustration in his first run in WWE, which included his “Stardust” character: “Here’s his full story. I’m at the TV hotel. It’s a smaller market. We’re at a Best Western, which was the TV hotel shockingly, and I’m not knocking our Best Westerns out there people, but anyways, I’m at this Best Western and I’m sitting in a rental car with Brandi. It’s freezing because we were in Scranton. It’s freezing, freezing. We were outside and the crew bus was right in front of us. It had The Rock and it had the John Cena photo on it from the second Mania. So we’ve already seen this bus for over a year now. This story was encompassing really two years, this story from John versus Rock, the saga, and it was wonderful. But when you’re on the card, not close to that and at my level, I had been chipping away a little bit. Brass rings here and there. Brass rings here and there, but I hadn’t broken through by any means. I just got so tired of seeing their dang faces, and I love John. He was my role model in the business. He’s a rental car guy with me until he got a bus. As much as I did, I just was getting so upset and I told her that I can’t keep looking at the same guys. I can’t.”
“I got out of the car and I threw a Yoohoo glass bottle up against beautiful Dwayne Johnson’s face. There might have been somebody sleeping on this crew bus for all I knew. It shattered everywhere and I just stared at him, like I wanted to fight this giant head on the side of this bus. I remember telling her, you marry a wrestler, you’re marrying wrestling. As bad as this is, this is part of it. I gotta get this out, and getting it out for me ultimately would lead to me leaving was the only way I could get it out. It was pent-up. It was pent-up for too long.”
On how it’s good to try and talk to somebody if you’re down on yourself, and how hard it was to go through that in front of his wife, Brandi Rhodes: “You know, today you’ve got a medical team at WWE that includes mental health services. I’m not saying that I was deep down the rabbit hole, but it’s still so helpful to talk to somebody. You never want to lower yourself in front of your beloved, in front of your wife. That was one of the hardest things for me was being Stardust in front of Brandi. That was rough. When Brandi married Cody Rhodes, he was the Intercontinental Champion. He was wrestling Randy Orton every night and we were absolutely tearing the joints down. Next thing you know, I’m running around in this space outfit and trying to make the best of it, but I was very dead inside.”
“We were right near a critical mass because I remember the next conversation was, here’s what needs to happen, and what I said what needs to happen next, everyone told me not to do, but gotta bet on ourselves wherever we are and I needed to then.”
Check out the complete Cody Rhodes interview from the “After the Bell with Corey Graves” podcast by visiting Apple.com. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
