AEW’s Tony Khan Gives His First Comment on Cody Rhodes Returning to WWE

Cody Rhodes officially returned to the WWE at WrestleMania 38 this past weekend, nearly two months after his departure from All Elite Wrestling. Rhodes has since spoken to a number of media outlets about why he chose to leave, saying that aside from it feeling like it was time for him to go there was a disagreement between himself and Khan that he consistently declined on divulging. Khan gave his first interview post-WrestleMania this week with Sports Illustrated and was asked to address the elephant in the room.

“I did lose a very prominent free agent,” Khan said. “But we’re debuting one tonight in Samoa Joe. In the past 30 days, we’ve also debuted Toni Storm, who was incredible last week in her win against The Bunny, and Jeff Hardy, one of the biggest stars in wrestling. We have a lot of excitement happening here, and that’s our focus.”

Khan previously addressed Rhodes’ departure in a media conference call prior to the Revolution pay-per-view, saying, “I don’t want to get too deep into it because a lot it’s personal between me and (Cody) but I tried to reach a longer agreement with him beyond what we had for the option years. And it sounded like at one point I think that we were going to, honestly, and when we couldn’t settle on it, the last thing I want to do is keep somebody here who isn’t gonna want to be here so it didn’t look like we were gonna get a longer deal done.

“I would’ve loved to have done it and I have a lot of respect for him but when we didn’t come to terms on that it made it pretty clear where we were gonna end up on things,” he added. “That being said, I said nothing but respectful stuff about Cody and I’ll continue to.”

Cody gave his side of the story in an interview with Variety that dropped on Saturday just as he arrived at WrestleMania, in which he said, “I chose to remain silent about my departure from AEW and I’m going to keep my word on that. There’s no shoot interview. There’s no nefarious tale that’s going to be told. There were all these different theories and none of them are correct. I mean, there were things about money and creative control. They were printed as fact and it’s been a very difficult two months to see that, when the reality is it was just time. It was a personal matter and we couldn’t move past it. I have nothing but respect for Matt [Jackson], Nick [Jackson] and Kenny [Omega]. I’m rooting for Tony Khan. His name is going to be in the history books as someone who helped to bankroll and support this entire alternative and revolution that AEW became but for me, it was just time to move on. I get an opportunity at my dream, I get another chance at it. And you really can’t leave any stone unturned with that.”