Kevin Owens Reveals He Connected Cody Rhodes With The Young Bucks

Kevin Owens has spoken about the part he played in changing the wrestling world when he put Cody Rhodes in contact with The Young Bucks in 2016.

Cody Rhodes left WWE in 2016 and soon began making a name for himself when he joined Bullet Club and linked up with The Young Bucks. Together, the trio held the biggest independent wrestling show in decades when they sold out the Sears Centre Arena in Chicago for All In back in September 2018. That event was the catalyst for the formation of All Elite Wrestling, the company which Cody Rhodes left in early 2022 before returning to WWE.

During an appearance on WWE After the Bell with Corey Graves, Kevin Owens spoke about Rhodes leaving WWE and revealed that he put The American Nightmare in touch with The Young Bucks and asked them to take care of his friend.

“I’ve told him this before but I’m so proud of Cody. When he was here, he and I got close pretty quickly and then he left and that really sucked for me because I felt like I was really losing [a friend]. I have people in this business that are really more like brothers to me than friends, it’s not everybody but there are a few people out there that I consider more like family. Cody is one of them, so when he left, it was a blow to me.”

“Cause I figured, look, we’re going to be so busy, we’re barely going to see each other, which is true, we saw each other once, maybe twice the whole time he was gone. When he was going out on his own, he was doing it because he felt this was best for him. He didn’t feel like he was being given the chance to be what he could be in WWE, so he decided to bet on himself and leave.”

“And the only thing I did, he asked me for some sort of guidance because he had never been on the independent scene before, and I gave him The Young Bucks’ numbers and I told them ‘can you guys take care of this guy?’ And look what happened. They really changed the industry, they did, there’s no denying it. Cody went out and did that, he didn’t do it himself, he had a lot of help and a lot of people but he was an integral part of that.”

Kevin Owens went on to say that he thinks Cody Rhodes’ ultimate goal was always to return to WWE.

“Then he came back here, which I don’t know about as much, but I think that was always his ultimate goal. As he was doing it, as things were progressing, his mindset might have changed at some point and seen himself coming back at some point because he was doing so well.”

H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the above transcription.