Cody Rhodes comments on making his return to WWE after being gone for six years
Cody Rhodes made his return to WWE at the Wrestlemania 38 PLE and defeated Seth Rollins. Just days prior to the event, Cody did an interview with Variety.com and talked about making his return to the company after a six-year absence…
“Everyone who knows has asked me how I’m feeling, if I’m really excited. The answer I kind of keep giving everybody is it’s just a really heavy feeling. When I first got into wrestling, I was solely in the WWE system, and I had that dream of getting to the top. Then dreams are like rivers, as the Garth Brooks song says, and it veered and it changed. Then we were able to do what we were able to do with AEW and that’s something that I’m very proud of, but to be able to revisit the thing that I set out to do in the first place when I didn’t think I would get that chance is just heavy.
Even now, thinking about it is heavy. So yeah, all the feelings — happy, excited, pressure, responsibility, all of it. But I don’t know how I will feel until I’m out there. It just seems like kind of a culmination of my whole career, but I don’t want to jinx it. I don’t want to put any hyperbole there, but it’s the biggest crowd in wrestling. It’s returning as me in something that I built and nobody else built. And that’s the ultimate vindication.”
Cody also commented on how he has changed as a performer since his first stint…
“I told Vince McMahon, Bruce Prichard and Nick Khan — this very small circle of individuals — I told them what I truly believe and it’s that I’m the best wrestler in the world. And to go further with it, I actually don’t think there’s a close second. But with that said, the opportunity now exists to prove it, and that’s what I’m most excited about.
It’s a completely different individual returning to the game. It’s a different brand. It’s someone who’s experienced all the wonders of independent wrestling, of traveling internationally, of being able to get on the ground with the fans that make this whole ship move. But different person or not, I’m still that little kid that I mentioned in an AEW promo that wants what my dad didn’t get, and I’m not going to say it out loud because I don’t want to jinx it. But, you know, he went to Madison Square Garden, stood across from Superstar Billy Graham and he held it in his hands, the goal of mine, and it was taken away because that was the context of the match. I understand that now as an adult, but as a kid, that was the only reason I ever wanted to get in, so that I could get what he didn’t get.”