Cody Rhodes: Gunther Can Take That Entire ‘America Vs Him’ And He Can Shove It Up His Ass

Cody Rhodes answers if his match with Gunther at Clash In Italy will be an ‘America vs Europe’ situation.

At WWE Clash In Italy on Sunday, Gunther and Rhodes will face off for the WWE championship and in the lead up to the bout, Gunther has made the match partially about the US vs Europe. For Cody, this is something he does not want to play into.

While speaking on WWE’s YouTube Channel in a new interview, Cody Rhodes spoke about Gunther trying to make the match about Europe vs USA.

“That’s probably the trickiest question, right? But if Gunther wants to make this a versus America situation, that’s just not the road I’d go down. I don’t think that helps you no matter where we are. I said it to him. I have the American flag tattooed on the side of my neck, but he’s the one who’s making it weird. I learned a long time ago in wrestling that we’re never needing to make this about America versus or your home country versus. No, we don’t need to do that in 2026. Last time I lost was in Germany. I don’t want to be the dumb American that just assumes Germany is like Austria, and Austria is like Italy, and Italy is like France. They’re all their own extremely different thing. Europe is not a monolith, and I found that out, and here’s something that I would cite. The last time we were in Italy, there’s video of me in the ring saying, hey, if you guys want us to come back and bring a bigger show, make some noise for me. The international language that we all talk is pro wrestling. If Gunther needs me to play American villain in Italy, sure, he can think that. He can have that whole outlook on it. But for me, one of the most beautiful things about being an American right now in an extremely divided country is that we can still go everywhere and we can still show what we love to do and what you love to consume and watch, and we can agree on this thing. We can agree on wrestling. I am not in policy. I am not a politician. Some have said that I am, but I’m not, I go over there because the show is over there and they deserve the show everywhere in the world, and we have things about us that are different, and this goes for everywhere we go. We have different beliefs. We have different rules, we have different laws. My job as WWE champion is to bring this, to bring the thing that we agree on. So we don’t have to focus on the things that we don’t. So respectfully, Gunther can take that entire America versus him versus America, and he can shove it up his ass.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Cody spoke about recent challenges from Ricky Saints and Sami Zayn. You can read more about that here.

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