Cody Rhodes Will Reportedly Compete at WrestleMania 38, How WWE May Introduce Him

Cody Rhodes did not appear on this week’s Monday Night Raw, despite heavy speculation that he would be arriving in WWE while the Red Brand was in AEW’s home city of Jacksonville, Florida. Reports popped up in the day leading up to Raw that there was an offer on the table for Rhodes to return to WWE and that, at least internally, Rhodes vs. Seth Rollins was on the card for WrestleMania 38. Rollins failed to beat Kevin Owens in Raw’s main event to take his spot at WrestleMania, but fans were quick to notice that the commentary team started dropping words like “nightmare” and “dashing.” 

Dave Meltzer then reported on the latest Wrestling Observer Radio that, despite no appearance from Rhodes, “The American Nightmare” vs. “The Visionary” was still the plan for the April event in Dallas. He said, “The impression is that Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins is the WrestleMania match. …He’s coming, that’s it. He’s coming. He’s wrestling Seth at WrestleMania unless something changes and I sure watched (last night’s Raw) not thinking anything’s changing.”

As to how WWE goes about doing it, Meltzer speculated that the company might do something like what they did with The Hardy Boyz when they returned at WrestleMania 33 and not announce the match until after the show has already started. Do you think that’s the right approach? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments. 

Rhodes has stayed quiet about his wrestling future since his farewell address to the AEW locker room last month. Meanwhile, AEW president Tony Khan explained how Rhodes’ departure came down to money during a recent media conference call. 

“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,” Khan said. “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.”