Cody Rhodes Talks Retirement & Praises WWE NXT Superstar Tye Dillinger
Former WWE Intercontinental Champion Cody Rhodes was recently a guest on Colt Cabana’s Art of Wrestling podcast. During the interview, Rhodes talked about what age he wants to retire at, as well as what NXT Superstar he calls “the greatest human being alive.”
Rhodes is currently 31 years old and says that he plans on retiring when he’s 40.
“I used to always say, ‘I’m done at 40. Like, that will be it. I will never wrestle again after 40.’ Yeah, I’m feeling I still will stick to that. Yeah, I don’t know why. That’s just the number I have in my mind. Yeah, the number is a real thing. The reason I have the number is I grew up around old wrestlers and it was really cool to see the people respected and loved them for the nostalgia it brought; however, it was also not cool to see them old and having to hurt themselves and I don’t want that life. They get older, but only in this wacky world is it that they’re still booked and I get why. I get it. The nostalgia, but if I was running an independent show or running a brand of my own, I definitely, if I had any of the legends in, there wouldn’t be any physicality.”
On the topic of Tye Dillinger, Rhodes cannot believe Dillinger is still in developmental. Rhodes also mentions that he’s often afraid to tweet about Dillinger in fear of Dillinger suffering for it, since Rhodes is currently not in the best graces with WWE.
“Greatest human being alive. Still in developmental. He’s in developmental. I’m afraid of…all the time I want to tweet stuff about Tye Dillinger and I’m afraid if I do, someone will be like, because I’m not in the best graces with the office currently, I’m afraid someone will be like, because of my love of him.”
Rhodes also said that his father, Dusty Rhodes, would always write in his reports that Dillinger was ready for the main roster.
“If a guy already had it, he didn’t spend a lot of time on them. Daniel Bryan is a great example. Barely kind of blew Dan off too. But in his reports, wrote, ‘this guy’s ready – what can I do?’ That’s the Tye Dillinger report from his fifth year in developmental. And, literally, that was what my dad always wrote about Tye, ‘what is he still doing here?'”
“The mystery of Tye. It’s a mystery. I think the only way to fix it is to every time you go to these events, like fans who go to NXT events, you need to give him everything because he’ll give it back, man.”
If you’d like to listen to this episode of the Art of Wrestling podcast in its entirety, you can click right here. Thank you to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
Picture used above is courtesy of GFW and WWE NXT on Facebook.