Cody Rhodes and Paul Heyman cut a masterful promo on this week’s Monday Night Raw as part of the build towards Rhodes challenging Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania 39. Rhodes was quick to bring up Heyman’s history with the Rhodes family, and how he played a vital role in helping the family financially and emotionally when they had fallen on hard times financially back at the turn of the century. Here’s a closer look at what happened.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Having left WCW yet again, Rhodes was contacted by Heyman to make an appearance at ECW’s Guilty As Charged pay-per-view on Jan. 8, 2000, and confront then-ECW World Champion Steve Corino, which resulted in him hitting the champ with a few bionic elbows. By the end of the month, he was back in the ring teaming with Tommy Dreamer to beat Corino and Raven on an episode of ECW on TNN.
That wound up being his first of seven matches in the promotion, which included him beating Corino in a Texas Bullrope Match at Living Dangerously 2000 and losing at Cyberslam 2000 in Philadelphia. His final match was on ECW Hardcore TV on May 20, 2000, in which he beat Jack Victory in another Bullrope Match. The company would host its final show less than a year later, while Rhodes would launch his own promotion, Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling, in July 2000.
Cody has previously mentioned in interviews how Rhodes’ return to the WWE in the mid-2000s and the sales from the DVD WWE produced of “The American Dream’s” greatest matches and moments helped get the family back on its feet. “The American Nightmare” would begin his pro wrestling journey by training at Ohio Valley Wrestling in 2006 and would debut on WWE television the following year.
In the final years before his tragic passing, Dusty helped train the next generation of WWE stars down at the WWE Performance Center. That included “The Tribal Chief” Roman Reigns, who explained back in 2020 that Dusty helped him discover his current persona back in promo classes.
“That’s what I had envisioned a long time ago, and it took a very scenic route to get here,” Reigns told After The Bell back in 2020. “It’s still tough for me to brag, but that’s what I love about I’m doing now is if I don’t want to, ‘Paul [Heyman], tell them. Tell them what I am. Remind them of who I am, read that resume right quick.’
“That’s something that’s nice about adding a layer to it, being able to play off somebody,” he continued. “But there’s no doubt, I’m just doing what I set out to do back in NXT, back at FCW.”
