Cody Rhodes Admits He Was Jealous Of WWE Stars Trained By Dusty Rhodes

Cody Rhodes may still have some emotions clouding his mind as he goes into his huge title challenge this weekend at WrestleMania.

A big part of Cody’s story going into WrestleMania has been his relationship with his late father Dusty Rhodes. Cody grew up watching his dad succeed and struggle as a performer and as a promoter. And one thing Cody has been trying to do is achieve the one thing his father couldn’t: win the WWE Championship.

But as much of a fairytale ending as that would be, Cody Rhodes’s journey hasn’t been without its speedbumps. Paul Heyman managed to make this story more personal by bringing Dusty into it when he mentioned how Dusty trained many of the early FCW and success stories, including Roman Reigns.

It is that relationship that put Dusty in a complicated spot when he was still alive. Cody was his son but the FCW and NXT trainees looked up to him and he imparted his fatherly wisdom on them when they were rookies.

This complicated situation bothered Cody Rhodes “intensely”, according to an interview he did with SI’s Jimmy Traina.

“I think the jealousy was probably more intense than I even want to admit, and it started actually before he had even passed when NXT was down the street from my house in Winter Park near Orlando there and they were first doing their TakeOvers.

It started even before because I wanted an experience as far as they were getting. I wanted to be in Dusty’s communications classes as he called it, but it was a promo class. I wanted to know what he was sharing with them. We’d never had that interaction.

When he was a writer for WWE and I was brought up on the road, he asked to be taken off the road and he went to Florida and started that job, so we never were really truly a coach and a player.”

Cody Rhodes also explained how it got worse over time.

“It was an intense jealousy. It only furthered when I had slipped myself down the card and you’re seeing, specifically the ones that were tough to watch were Charlotte, Roman, Mox, Seth, Kevin, Sami, Sasha, Bayley, those were very tough to watch and I definitely lashed out.

I lashed out at Hunter too as well because he was the one who would be like, ‘These are the Dusty’s kids.’ Me and my sister Teil hated that, but we also couldn’t say we hated it because they’re doing great and they’re representing him. They’re almost representing him better than I am. That’s why it took time.”

Cody Rhodes will face Roman Reigns on Sunday night for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship.

h/t WrestlingNews.co for the transcription