Article: WWE’s Cody Rhodes faces toughest challenge ever after ‘jarring’ WrestleMania moment
Article from the New York Post about WWE's Cody Rhodes
Cody Rhodes now faces the greatest task given to him in his professional carer — leading the WWE audience to a moment that makes the one potentially missed at WrestleMania 39 forgivable in their eyes.
“It’s the biggest challenge that’s ever been presented to me,” Rhodes said in a Zoom interview promoting his new Peacock documentary “American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes.” “Bigger than doing All In, bigger than doing AEW, the biggest challenge ever is can this get hotter?”
The “American Nightmare” said he can’t look at his loss to Roman Reigns in the main event match for the Undisputed WWE Universal championship and a chance to finish the story of winning the WWE title his father Dusty Rhodes never held as either a fleeting moment missed or one that will present itself again.
That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a jolting experience for him.
The fans’ displeasure with him not winning was a “subversion of the normal expectation of WrestleMania” in his eyes.
The show, which is the culmination of WWE’s creative year, is supposed to make people happy, he believes. That night did exactly the opposite for many.
“We left a sold-out SoFi Stadium with 80-something-thousand super pissed-off people,” Rhodes said. “There are Roman fans too, don’t get me wrong. But that was, to this day, when I think about the loss, when I think about how things went down, that to me is still jarring.”
Rhodes, 38, noted that thinking about it can almost bring him right back in the ring as he pulled himself up after defeat and when he told the cameraman he would walk the entire way up the ramp because he wasn’t going to go the “loser lane” side ramp area.
He admitted that by all of the metrics that wrestling is measured by and the magical moments you have in the ring on the build to WrestleMania, everything about was “incredibly hot.”
He and Paul Heyman interacted one-on-one for the first time and friends Sami Zayn’s and Kevin Owens’ own story with The Bloodline and the tag team championships all intersected at the right time.
“If it was a moment missed, it’s my job to find the moment again,” Rhodes said.
To make good on the meeting the challenge, Rhodes believes he can’t focus on “trying to work the marks” but needs to try to “connect to the consumer” by being honest with them and continuing to be himself.
A big step toward doing that in his mind would be defeating Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam to complete their trilogy after they split their first two matches. Doing so would leave the question of what is legitimately next for him with a pretty simple answer — another run at a world championship.
“Who could possibly step in now and say, ‘I don’t know, he may not be the guy?’ ” Rhodes said. “That’s really what’s in front of me. If you’re able to not just get out of this alive, but with a victory. Winning the big ones at the big ones. That puts us in a different conversation. That puts us in the space where you start doing this (motions a title belt around his waist) and every fan in the arena knows what you’re talking about.”
With November’s Survivor Series as WWE’s next big pay-per-view and last year’s introduction of WarGames, a match Rhodes’ father created, he isn’t getting his hopes of being in one despite it being on the list of things he’s like to do in his career.
He feels it’s “just not gonna happen” for him after it’s eluded him a few times.
“I’m not gonna get picked for the WarGames team or who knows what I could be doing that night,” Rhodes said. “It would be a really special thing if I could.”
“American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes” streams July 31 and WWE SummerSlam streams Aug. 5, only on Peacock
