Cody Rhodes Cuts a Tearful Promo After AEW Dynamite Cage Match

Cody Rhodes closed out AEW Dynamite in Atlanta this week in shocking fashion by jumping off the top of a Steel Cage and Moonsaulting onto Wardlow to win AEW's first cage match. After the show went off the air Rhodes stayed in the ring, and with tears in his eyes he cut a promo for his hometown crowd. He started off by saying "That was the best episode of Dynamite yet," then asked the crowd if they would indulge him and stick around for three dark matches.

He then told a quick story about his father, Dusty Rhodes, and how he fell in love with wrestling when he saw a crowd of Atlanta fans cheer for "The American Dream" after a show when he was eight years old.

"And I didn't know I wanted to be a wrestler, but I knew 'I want to be famous, like he is,'" Rhodes said. "When I got into wrestling at 15, when I debuted in 2007, you guys were pretty hard on me. And I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being hard on me, it made me come back week, after week, after week."

"Somebody asked me earlier if I was going to jump off that cage," he added. "In my home town? You bet your ass, I'm jumping off that cage!"

Rhodes' win on Wednesday night was the last stipulation he needed to meet in order to get a grudge match with Maxwell Jacob Friedman. The two will face each other at AEW Revolution on Feb. 29.

In an interview with Atlanta outlet 11 Alive earlier in the week, Rhodes talked about the potential future of AEW and dropped a hint that he wants Dynamite off of Wednesday nights within five years. Because of the NBA's schedule on TNT, that would likely put AEW on Monday nights against Monday Night Raw.

"I would like the company, in five years, to be on a different night and competing in the same fashion they are," Rhodes said. "Not that I don't love Wednesday nights, but I can tell we have real players and I look at this data. We're not lying about the revolution anymore, i's very supported. So I would love to see how it does on another night of the week."

"If we had a random storm situation or something popped up and we had to put Dynamite on a Monday night, if that was to happen in this current threshold, I'd still be very confident in what we can do," he added. "And I'd be confident that our guys would be up for the challenge."