Cody Rhodes Teases Tribute to Sting in Future WWE Match

Rhodes might hit a "Stinger Splash" in The Icon's honor.

By Liam Crowley

Sting is getting ready to call it a career. Like so many of his peers in the AEW locker room, Sting got a new lease on his in-ring career inside All Elite Wrestling. The former WCW frontman was forced to retire in 2015 following an injury suffered in a match against Seth Rollins at WWE Night of Champions. For the next five years, Sting laid low in the wrestling world, making sporadic appearances at autographs signings and very rare televised opportunities. It wasn't until AEW Dynamite: Winter is Coming 2020 that Sting made a full-time return to wrestling, shocking fans by competing in traditional tag matches at the age of 61 years old.

That initial debut saw Sting confront four men: Arn Anderson, Dustin Rhodes, Cody Rhodes, and Darby Allin. While that stare down with Allin culminated into a tag team partnership, his other confrontations, namely Cody, never blossomed into anything more.

Cody Rhodes Congratulates Sting

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(Photo: AEW)

The American Nightmare has love for the man they call Sting.

Speaking to Sports Illustrated, Cody Rhodes reflected on his brief time sharing the ring with Sting while also wishing him congratulations for his historic run.

"The little I had to do with his debut there is a wonderful memory," Rhodes said. "I was a little Stinger. Maybe I'll pull out a Stinger Splash in his honor. Seriously, cheers to a wonderful career."

Rhodes left AEW in early 2022, electing to return to WWE instead of re-signing with the company he helped start. The final couple months of Rhodes's AEW run did see him lost in the shuffle a bit, as he danced around the AEW TNT Championship scene and struggled with unfavorable crowd reactions.

If he had stayed in AEW, Rhodes would have had a major opponent waiting for him: Sting.

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"I was going to wrestle Sting," Rhodes told ComicBook.com in July. "I don't think I've ever shared that with anybody and nothing was on paper or anything like that. 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.

"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," Rhodes 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."

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