Cody Rhodes cites WWE WrestleMania 39 as the site of his favorite career match ever.
For nearly 20 years, Cody Rhodes has entertained fans of the squared circle. His all-time favorite match, however, comes fairly recently.
While speaking with The Bill Simmons Podcast, Rhodes showed special love for his WWE WrestleMania 39 bout against Roman Reigns, whom he challenged for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. “The American Nightmare” ultimately fell short in the match, leaving himself and many fans frozen in disappointment afterward. As he attests, though, the mid-match action told a rather electric story.
“My favorite match is WrestleMania 39, which is the one where it doesn’t happen,” Rhodes said. “I probably would have been pumped to win, but there’s something about that night where things were happening in the stadium that had never happened to me. [Roman]’s got me in the guillotine choke. You hear these old timers, and God bless him, I love them, talk about ‘just stay right there and the people will react and they’ll go.’ When you’ve seen the amount of cool flips and awesome stuff, sometimes that’s that seems like maybe that’s not real anymore.
“Then in that moment, I remember I’m just slowly wiggling my head out and I can hear an entire stadium where the sound goes up, start to move,” he continued. “And I thought, ‘Oh man, they’re into this.’ How blessed am I that they’re into this? And when it’s that good, it feels completely real. Everything seems real. Roman is the greatest enemy of my life. I’m trying to climb a mountain that’s impossible to climb. Just that acoustic moment for me, it made it my favorite match of all time.”
One year later, Rhodes met Reigns one-on-one again, this time on the stage of WrestleMania 40 night two. There, Rhodes found more success as he officially unseated “The Tribal Chief” for the Undisputed WWE Championship, with fans and several locker-roommates serenading him in cheers afterward.
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