Cody Rhodes Addresses His AEW Departure During the “American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes” Documentary

Cody Rhodes’s new documentary, American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes, officially dropped on Peacock on Monday and covered all aspects of Rhodes’ pro wrestling career. That included his departure from AEW in February 2022, a company he helped create and was one of the executive vice presidents since 2019. The trailer for the documentary ended with a specific sound bite of Rhodes saying, “This is my one request in this entire documentary. This one answer, I don’t want edited in any capacity, don’t even edit this part.”

It turns out that was the preamble to Rhodes explaining his reason behind leaving AEW — “I can’t tell you why I left AEW, I can’t and I won’t. But I can tell you the reasons that were said that didn’t actually matter. I didn’t leave AEW because of money and I didn’t leave AEW because of other talents. I left AEW because of a personal issue. That’s it. The byproduct of leaving AEW is the opportunity to go for the biggest dream I ever had and the first dream I had in my life.”

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Triple H Refers to AEW as a “Secondary Promotion” During Cody Rhodes’ Documentary

The clip then cuts to Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who discussed Rhodes’ thought process on leaving AEW and how it compares to WWE — “To then take that gamble again and say, ‘this is not what I wanted to be. I didn’t grow up dreaming of being the champion or the face of a secondary promotion. I wanted to be the WWE Champion.’”

Rhodes’ first attempt at finally winning the WWE Championship, a title that had eluded his family for decades, finally came at WrestleMania 39 back in April when he took on Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. He lost due to outside interference and hasn’t been back in the title picture since then.

How Cody Rhodes’ “Heel” Run in AEW Was Supposed to End

Rhodes’ final year in AEW saw him portray a pseudo-heel character where he actively refused to turn heel despite outcry from fans. He explained in a recent interview with ComicBook that the endgame of his heel run would’ve been a match with Sting, something teased all the way back in December 2020 but never materialized. 

“I was going to wrestle Sting,” Rhodes confirmed. “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.”