Cody Rhodes recalls his first meeting with WWE before returning to the company at WrestleMania 38.
When the trailer for the 'American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes' docuemtary released, many fans were to quick to note a line in the trailer where Kevin Owens says that Vince McMahon flew to Rhodes for a meeting when he was a free agent, a meeting that seemingly led to the return of 'The American Nightmare' to WWE.
In a new interview with Chris Van Vliet, Rhodes was asked to recall the first thing that Vince McMahon said to him during their first meeting.
“That’s a good question, I think he laughed. I think he laughed because I kind of snuck in, I leaned over him. I remember going in to talk to him, I wasn’t afraid of anything and I was over compensating almost. I’m not scared of anything, let’s talk. I was almost overcompensating because both Vince and Bruce were so welcoming, this is the term I can use, sweet."
Rhodes went on to detail more of the conversation, noting that the business side of things only came up at the last second.
"[They were] so positive about what I had done, the fact that they had knew what I had done and were citing different things like, ‘I saw this, I saw this.’ I couldn’t believe it, it was very self affirming and it just went for that type of happy go lucky… we’re talking about Liberty who was a year old and he’s talking to me about what it’s like to be dad for a daughter and how special it is and in the last twenty seconds of the meeting, ‘Oh, Seth Rollins at WrestleMania’, that’s the only business that came up. I told Brandi I would say this, but I was adamant about saying please don’t do one of those, ‘Hey this is the deal, if you leave it’s off the table.’ Don’t do one of those. I have to leave and think about it, I have to. Even in your mind, it’s like ‘Yup, I think we’re gonna do that.’ But I have to think about it and take some time because we had made such massive decisions, so this one was going to be something similar. But it was special, didn’t feel like a meeting until maybe the last thirty seconds.”
'American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes' is set to premiere on Peacock on July 31, 2023.
In a seperate interview, Rhodes talked about how WWE told him to not go online after his loss at WrestleMania 39. Fans can learn more here.
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