Cody Rhodes says his heel run in AEW was supposed to lead to a match with Sting.
Speaking with Matthew Aguilar for ComicBook, Rhodes revealed that the endgame for his heel run “probably” would have been a match with Sting.
“I was going to wrestle Sting,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anybody and nothing was on paper or anything like that. But I can say I got a tremendous offer from AEW creatively, financially, the full package. You won’t hear me say anything bad about AEW or Tony (Khan) or my time there. It was a tremendous offer, but the offer wasn’t right for me.
“What I wanted to get back to was the first goal that I ever had (winning the WWE Championship). But yeah, that probably would’ve been the endgame. That’s what had been discussed, was to get one (match) with one of my heroes, Sting.”
Cody left AEW in February 2022 and returned to WWE at WrestleMania 39. Since then, he has become one of the company’s top stars.
Cody Rhodes Reflects On End Of AEW Run
Speaking with Sam Roberts on Notsam Wrestling, Cody Rhodes looked back on the end of his AEW tenure. Fans wanted him to turn heel, and by refusing to do so, Rhodes was making the switch anyway. In hindsight, he noted that this approach was too meta.
“I think at the end of [my time in] AEW, it’s just a case of, I’ve never underestimated our audience in the sense that that’s why I use a lot of big words in promos,” Rhodes said. “People will say, ‘Oh, he’s talking down to them.’ No, they’re not down. These people, some of them are doctors, some of them are lawyers, some of them are industrial, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean they’re not educated. The wrestling audience is as educated as any audience. But at AEW, I think trying to do what I was doing there at the end was just a bit too meta.
“‘Hey, the thing we want is you to turn heel.’ So for me to do that, to turn heel, is by saying, verbally, out loud, ‘I’m not gonna do it.’ Which is being a heel. But it didn’t work, in a sense. It did because I had a really fun match with Ethan Page where the crowd was just going nuts, and I loved the polarized crowds, the split crowds because obviously I’m part of the Cena era of our industry, so I loved it. But it might have just been over the heads of people.”
Rhodes recently commented on his neck tattoo. Click here to see what he had to say.
