Former WWE Superstar Cody Rhodes was recently interviewed by Doug Mortman and Larry Dallas on Busted Open, and was asked if he was scared to leave the massive WWE professional wrestling organization:
“So, little-known fact, I had kind of planned for some time that I would be leaving. My father actually wanted me to ask for my release after WrestleMania 28 in Miami. I remember him telling me and it took me, gosh, five years to follow his advice. Yeah, I’d say it’s scary, but maybe it’s not scary at all now that I think about it.
“Just because I know what I’m capable of doing and I know what I’m capable of not. I didn’t want to be delusional about it. I was very familiar with my own skill-set and I wasn’t able to put it on display where I was at, so why stay? Why stay when there are these opportunities.
“I didn’t get the opportunity to wrestle Kurt Angle in WWE; I got to wrestle Kurt Angle in Northeast Wrestling and not only Kurt Angle, Mike Bennett – the shining star of TNA, the ‘Miracle’ Mike Bennett – the night before. And then Sunday, Sami Callihan, who is just building a massive brand for himself all without the machine.
“You mention Brian Anthony, who’s kind of the young guy on the totem pole – well, that’s the one you have to look out for – and Ricky Steamboat’s involved with those matches. Those matches weren’t happening for me in WWE, so why stay?”
Rhodes also stated he didn’t need to stay in the WWE ‘just for the money’ because he is already rich:
“I’m rich already. I don’t need the money (laughing). I worked for them for ten years and they paid me really, really well. I absolutely appreciate what you’re saying because there are those who stay with the mentality… the ‘pin me, pay me’ mentality. That don’t work for me, bud. This was never about the money. It was about those moments – you know, I’m from a wrestling family so I grew up wanting to have moments like I saw my father have and if I can’t chase those, then I’m not doing the right job. That connection he had as a performer with the fan – the real, authentic connection – even when you only get that in fleeting situations, it’s the best feeling in the world for a performer. So it made it easy for me.”
Rhodes then went into depth regarding his Stardust character in the WWE, the thought process behind it, and ultimately what led to its decline:
“Well, it wasn’t mine. That’s the best I can say. It wasn’t mine, but I can say once I knew we were moving forward with it, I did really try to – if you ever see some of the concept art, I should probably put it out on Twitter. The original designs for Stardust – they look like Cable from the X-Men. They just had paint on one eye and it was almost like a scar and it grew into, ‘Let’s have him cut his hair short like his brother and let’s paint him up like his brother.’
“Then, even one of the last arguments was the suit was supposed to be a different color and they were like, ‘Oh, well they should match’ and I just – ugh. It got farther. It took me the whole time as Stardust to get it as close to the comic book element as I could. It took me the whole time I was Stardust until kind of the bitter end.
“I can say that it was the most offensive for the old man because I think he thinks I’m way more handsome than I am. He thinks I look like Errol Flynn. He couldn’t believe that they had covered my body and my face up and that was his take on it because he always said I had like these movie-star good looks.
“He would always say it in front of the wrong people and always I’d have to kind of like, ‘Hey, Dad, calm down here’. Whoever’s decision it was, I don’t think everything was thought out in the process. I think they just wanted that quick moment of ‘Oh, well, Goldust is his brother, so wouldn’t that be cool?’ And then, two years later, it wasn’t as cool.”
WWE Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes, Cody’s father, passed away last year, and Rhodes revealed a promise that he made to his late father that he would not use his death in any type of storyline:
“Here’s the issue: I didn’t want to be anything after my Dad’s passing. I didn’t want to be Stardust, but I didn’t want to be Cody Rhodes either, because – it’s a very long story that I shared with my buddy the other night and some people know this.
“My Dad despised the angle between – I want to say it was Rey Mysterio and Randy Orton, where they mentioned Eddie Guerrero and they mentioned his passing and they used it as a vessel. A lot of people said, ‘Oh, well, Eddie would love this.’ He might have, but I never, ever, ever will forget – my Dad and I were watching Raw at the time. My Dad said, ‘Do not let anyone ever say I would’ve loved something.’ And he was just talking about, in general, for when the day comes that he’s not around and that stuck with me forever.
“I remember he went on a whole tirade that night. He was like, ‘How do they know for sure?’ and he was one of those who I had to beg him to come back for Battleground. I had to beg him to come back for anything. He really wanted his body of work to stand on its own and speak for itself. So when he passed, no one presented me with the kind of option of, hey, let me rally the flag and do it for the family.
“But I personally wouldn’t have been comfortable doing it because I had built my previous nine, ten years there on trying to be anything, but Dusty’s son so it would be cheap, it would be hollow for me to have done it then. Would it have worked? Probably, but I didn’t want to do that because I love my Dad too much to bring his name up on TV and say I’m doing it for him when the last nine, ten years of my career, I had been doing it for me, you know?”
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