Brandi Rhodes departed AEW at the same time as her husband Cody Rhodes, and Cody would eventually make his WWE return at WrestleMania 38. Before they departed AEW, Brandi had a memorable program with Dan Lambert, which resulted in a host of barbs being thrown between the two on TV. There were some rumors that the TV feud between them led to Brandi and Cody departing AEW, and there were also rumors that AEW was not going to renew Brandi’s contract, thus causing them to leave. Brandi spoke with DS of Ring The Belle and cleared up both of those, shooting them down and revealing that AEW offered her a contract at the same time as Cody (H/T Fightful).
First Brandi addressed her feud with Lambert on TV, and she had quite a bit of fun with their program on TV. “When I got to call [Dan Lambert] a Paul Heyman wannabe, that was so fun. That pandemic crowd had so much fun with it. They were having a blast,” Rhodes said. “Then, pockets of the internet started flaring up about X, Y, and Z. Then, it started to become a little bit less, less fun. I think that’s where you end up with Dan stepping away. Cody and I had our reasons that we left. That was not one of them.”
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Rhodes then addressed the rumors that weren’t true, including that they left because of Lambert and the rumors of AEW not offering to renew her contract. “Cody got to say in the documentary what was not true. I didn’t get to say that. Since I can’t say some other things, I would like to say what’s not true. So it’s not true that we left because the Dan Lambert segments upset me. That’s not true,” Rhodes said.”
Everything that Dan said, I was there for it. I enjoyed it. Some of it almost made me laugh a couple of times because I was just like, ‘Jeez, this man.’ The other thing that’s not true is not true that I was not going to get another contract,” Rhodes said. “We were both well on our way to trying to decide what our contracts were. So it was not true that they decided not to renew my contract and only wanted to renew Cody’s, and that’s why Cody left. It’s not true. So you can cross those two things off the list, and the conspiracy theories can continue.”
After Cody and Brandi departed AEW, Cody would return at WrestleMania, and he’s been one of WWE’s biggest superstars ever since. He was in the middle of a heel storyline when he departed AEW though, and many have wondered what the end goal of that was. During an interview with ComicBook.com, he revealed it was all leading to a match with Sting.
“I was going to wrestle Sting,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anybody and nothing was on paper or anything like that. But I can say I got a tremendous offer from AEW creatively, financially, the full package. You won’t hear me say anything bad about AEW or Tony (Khan) or my time there. It was a tremendous offer, but the offer wasn’t right for me. What I wanted to get back to was the first goal that I ever had (winning the WWE Championship). But yeah, that probably would’ve been the endgame. That’s what had been discussed, was to get one (match) with one of my heroes, Sting.”
