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Cody Rhodes Reacts To Unexpected WWE Fan Cheers For Randy Orton

By Monika Thapa • Published Apr 01, 2026 06:12 EDT
randy orton cody rhodes wwe
Randy Orton & Cody Rhodes, SmackDown, 2024: (Source - WWE.com)

Cody Rhodes is one of the, if not the top, babyface of WWE, and yet fans are cheering more for the heel star Randy Orton than for him.

The Viper turned heel during the March 13th edition of Friday Night SmackDown during his contract signing segment with Cody Rhodes for their Undisputed WWE Championship match at WrestleMania 42 in Vegas.

Typically, a babyface gets cheered while a heel gets jeered by the wrestling fanbase. However, even though the Viper is the villain in this storyline, he is getting cheered, while fans are not giving the same reaction to babyface Cody Rhodes.

Cody Rhodes Is Not “Angry” At Fans For Cheering His Heel Rival

This subject was brought up during Cody’s recent interview on the Busted Open podcast, where WWE Hall of Famer Bully Ray asked him to open up about how he feels about fans cheering for Randy Orton instead of him.

In response, The American Nightmare stated that if he were younger, he would have surely taken this personally. But now, after gaining so much experience in the wrestling business, it does not faze him.

Since Randy Orton is chasing a record at WrestleMania 42, he understands why the fans are rallying behind him, even when he should be the one being cheered as the babyface.

“I don’t take it personally. I think maybe when I was younger, I did. And certainly, there’s no absolute in that; I’m sure some things slipped through the armor a bit, and you feel it. But my thought in terms of fans today, more than ever, is that we are out there, and whatever their emotional need is, if they need to cheer for you, if they need to cheer for him, if they need to yell at you—I can’t put a governor on that, and I will not. Tully Blanchard rules in terms of for me when he’d say, ‘Loudest the longest.’ I can’t be angry at them, whatever it is they need.”

“If they’re cheering for Randy as he seeks 15, even with the things he did, okay. I’m not there to try and tell you wrong or right. There’s no wrong way to be a fan. So right now, it hasn’t got to me. I’ll be honest, sometimes maybe it will, but right now, no.”

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