Cody Rhodes Comments On Wanting To Make His Own Legacy

Cody Rhodes is working incredibly hard to distinguish himself from his father as much as possible in wrestling.

Cody, like many other wrestlers with famous family members, has long struggled to differentiate himself from his late father, “the American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. Throughout his career he has had to deal with the constant comparisons to his father.

Even referring to him by his full name conjures up images of Dusty Rhodes and biggest storylines seem to involve his father in one way or another.

Because of his status as a second-generation wrestler, Cody has struggled to find his own unique identity and place within the wrestling business. But despite the constant Dusty comparisons, Cody is still determined to become his own man in wrestling by doing the things his father didn’t or couldn’t.

Speaking on ESPN Radio, Cody Rhodes detailed exactly what he meant by creating his own legacy, and gave some insight into what goes through his mind and those of other multi-generation wrestlers.

“Well, I think a bit secret that there is when it comes to second or third-generation wrestlers, honesty this trickles down to any athlete, that your parent came before you and did something great. It’s a thing you don’t always say is, ‘Yeah, I want to honor them. I want to honor my mom or my dad,’ but also, you want to be better than they were, and not in a negative way.

You want to take it a step further. For me, winning the Royal Rumble you mentioned, my dad passed away in 2015, and it’s so unique that he’s not able to really see it, but I feel like he’s still here with me.

But to be able to do some things he never touched, and Dusty did everything. So to be able to win the Royal Rumble, to go to WrestleMania, and be the main event of the biggest thing that’s ever involved in the wrestling scene since the turn of the century, I’m blessed, I’m lucky.

But I’m still on the hunt. You mentioned SummerSlam tonight, Buffalo, I’m excited because, hopefully, I’m gonna get to talk about what I’m gonna do at SummerSlam.

But still on the hunt to find my own legacy because the tricky thing when you’re in these families is you want to look at everybody on a different page and say, ‘Oh, they were different, they did this, and he was different, he did this.’ And just, that’s my way of honoring them is trying to be better than both dad and brother, and that’s certainly a struggle because they laid a great path.”

Cody Rhodes’ most recent match took place at Money In The Bank when he defeated Dominik Mysterio and this past week on RAW he challenged Brock Lesnar to a rubber match at SummerSlam.

h/t WrestlingNews.co for the transcription