Cody Rhodes Comments on the Success of AEW’s All in 2023

WWE’s Cody Rhodes hosted a Reddit AMA on Monday in which he was asked to comment on the success of AEW’s upcoming All In event. Rhodes, alongside The Young Bucks, booked the initial All In event back in 2018, which wound up serving as the predecessor for the launch of All Elite Wrestling and was the first show outside of WWE or WCW to sell more than 10,000 tickets to a live pro wrestling event since 1993. The 2023 installment will take place at London’s Wembley Stadium on Aug. 27 and has set the record for the largest paid attendance of any single-day pro wrestling event in history, selling 80,846 tickets as of last week.

“I will be working that day, but I am very happy for the guys and girls competing out there,” Rhodes wrote when asked if he’ll be watching the show. “I am proud of Matt/Nick (Jackson) for taking our creation to another level. Also shout out to my Sister, Teil, who named the event and Joe Koff at ROH for helping us and allowing us the chance to do it ourselves.”

Cody Rhodes on His Heel Run in AEW

Rhodes discussed his time in AEW in a number of interviews leading up to the release of his documentary, American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes. He repeatedly mentioned how his “heel” run during his final year with AEW didn’t work and noted in an interview with ComicBook that his antagonistic run was supposed to culminate in 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.

“And it’s one of those things, you can wrestle one of your heroes or you can work with one of your heroes and he can be the head of creative (Paul Levesque), you can’t have it all,” he continued. “And I think one thing I do pride myself on as a wrestler is I will make a decision. It might be a left turn, it might be exactly where you think I’m going, but I will make a decision. I will not get stuck because I felt like I’d been stuck early in my career and never want to be that way again.”

AEW All In 2023 Card

• AEW World Championship: MJF vs. Adam Cole
• AEW “Real” World Championship: CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe
• AEW World Tag Team Championships: FTR vs. The Young Bucks
• AEW Women’s World Championship: Hikaru Shida vs. Toni Storm vs. Saraya vs. Dr. Britt Baker
• Will Ospreay vs. Chris Jericho
• Kenny Omega, Hangman Page & Kota Ibushi vs. Konosuke Takeshita, Jay White & Juice Robinson
• Darby Allin & Sting vs. Swerve Strickland & AR Fox (Coffin Match)
• Eddie Kingston, Orange Cassidy, Best Friends & Lucha Brothers vs. Blackpool Combat Club (Jon Moxley, Claudio Castagnoli & Wheeler Yuta) & TBA (Stadium Stampede Match)
• (Zero Hour) ROH World Tag Team Championships: Aussie Open vs. MJF & Adam Cole