Cody Rhodes’ presence was felt as AEW Dynamite celebrated its 200th episode this week in Tampa, Florida. To commemorate the event, a video package played early in the show celebrating some of the biggest moments from the show’s history, and the former executive vice president and three-time TNT Champion appeared multiple times throughout the promo. The clips included his involvement in the debut episode, driving Shaquille O’Neal through a table and his final match in the company when he dropped the TNT Championship to Sammy Guevara in a Ladder Match.
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Rhodes announced his departure from AEW in February 2022 and made his return to WWE two months later at WrestleMania 38. He recently addressed his decision to leave AEW in his new documentary, American Nightmare: Becoming Cody Rhodes.
Cody Rhodes Says a “Personal Issue” Drove Him to Leave AEW
“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,” Rhodes said. “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.”
Rhodes also discussed his final year in AEW in a number of interviews leading up to the documentary’s premiere. That included an interview with ComicBook, in which he revealed his “heel” run was going to culminate in a match with Sting,
Cody Rhodes on The Scrapped Plans for His Heel AEW Run
“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.”
