Cody Rhodes Reveals When He Was Cleared For Royal Rumble Match
Cody Rhodes revealed some details about his WWE return at the Royal Rumble noting when he was cleared to compete in the match.
The Men’s Royal Rumble was won by Cody Rhodes, who entered the match in the covered 30th and final spot. It was Cody’s first time wrestling on WWE TV since early June 2022 when he tore his right pectoral muscle prior to the Hell in a Cell match against Seth Rollins, which he competed in and won.
For the past 7+ months, Cody had surgery on the torn pectoral muscle, he rehabbed a lot and WWE spent the last month airing video packages every week for four weeks to build up his return.
Going into the Royal Rumble match, Cody was the favorite to win the Men’s Royal Rumble. That’s what he did as he fought back against the first entrant GUNTHER and found a way to get the win.
In a post show interview with Ariel Helwani of BT Sport, Cody revealed that he didn’t actually get cleared to wrestle again until the day of the Rumble itself although it was considered a formality at that point since Cody had done wrestling training for weeks leading into the show.
“I went to the Performance Center, I remember I made a joke in AEW about hip toss class, I did a hip toss class. Thank God for it, actually, because I worked with…I won’t say one guy’s name because I don’t want to blow his spot up, but I worked with Carmelo Hayes. Joe Gacy was the other guy, I don’t know why I’m not crediting him. They were rough with me, they were rugged.”
“It let me feel what I need to feel to know where to get. I can’t wait for their opportunities to come because they are incredible wrestlers and incredible stars. That experience, I got partially cleared through that. I was able to do what I want, my wind was good, I was training heavily with PT [physical therapy] and an off-site team that my wife got for me. I didn’t really get fully cleared until today.
“Looked good, and everything was great, but they still had to get in there, grab it, feel on it. That’s a wild situation, when you’ve been announced for the Royal Rumble, you’ve seen your shirts and seen the young fans. I think it was more of a formality than anything, but it still had me kind of shaking.”
“WWE has been very good to me medically, very good. I’ll be in PT for the rest of my life, though. I’ve been there every week and now I have to just do preventive stuff. It changed everything about how I’ve trained.”
Thanks to his victory in the Royal Rumble match, Cody Rhodes will get an Undisputed WWE Universal Championship match against Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39 in April just as long as Reigns remains the champion going into that match.