Cody Rhodes Reveals What Steve Austin Told Him After His WrestleMania 38 Match

Cody Rhodes and Steve Austin both had surprise matches during Saturday night’s WrestleMania 38. While Austin’s match came from his segment with Kevin Owens (which turned out to be a trap where Owens could lure him out of retirement), Rhodes wound up being Seth Rollins’ surprise opponent handpicked by Vince McMahon. “The American Nightmare” arrived with the identical presentation he had in AEW and, based on the fan reactions, had one of the best matches of the night. Rhodes revealed in a press conference on Sunday morning that Austin briefly spoke with him after his match. 

After recalling a story of meeting with Austin back when he was working a New Japan event in Long Beach, California, Rhodes said Austin told him, ‘That was the match you need to have.’” He later mentioned that he’ll cut his first promo post-WWE return on this week’s Monday Night Raw. 

Steve Austin to Cody last night: That was the match you needed to have #WrestleMania

— Connor Casey (@ConnorJCasey) April 3, 2022

In an interview with Variety that dropped just as he was making his entrance on Saturday night, Rhodes talked about his mindset for his return — “Everyone who knows has asked me how I’m feeling, if I’m really excited. The answer I kind of keep giving everybody is it’s just a really heavy feeling. When I first got into wrestling, I was solely in the WWE system, and I had that dream of getting to the top. Then dreams are like rivers, as the Garth Brooks song says, and it veered and it changed. Then we were able to do what we were able to do with AEW and that’s something that I’m very proud of, but to be able to revisit the thing that I set out to do in the first place when I didn’t think I would get that chance is just heavy.

“Even now, thinking about it is heavy,” he added. “So yeah, all the feelings — happy, excited, pressure, responsibility, all of it. But I don’t know how I will feel until I’m out there. It just seems like kind of a culmination of my whole career, but I don’t want to jinx it. I don’t want to put any hyperbole there, but it’s the biggest crowd in wrestling. It’s returning as me in something that I built and nobody else built. And that’s the ultimate vindication.”