Real Reason Cody Rhodes Was Angry With WWE
Cody Rhodes has lifted the lid on the root of the anger that caused him to walk away from WWE, and why his exit can never be repeated.
Cody Rhodes walked away from WWE in 2016 after growing tired of his direction in the company and their insistence that he remain as the face-painted Stardust character.
That led to a history-making hiatus from the company where he helped found All Elite Wrestling, becoming one of four wrestling EVPs alongside The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega. Rhodes broke ranks in 2022 when he left AEW and returned as a hero to WWE.
Since that comeback, Cody Rhodes has headlined WrestleMania three times in a row and currently holds the WWE Championship, having reclaimed that gold from John Cena at SummerSlam.
Cody Rhodes Angry At WWE
Speaking on the All The Smoke podcast, Cody Rhodes explained why he was angry at WWE before he left the company:
I’m surprised they let me back. And legally, one thing that came as a byproduct of my departure is that nobody gets to leave the way I left. I got so lucky that I was Dusty Rhodes’ son. They, I believe, respected that I had put in a decade of work.
I didn’t even sign my release papers; told them I was done on social media, which doesn’t work anymore. None of that flies now. I had to leave. And I’ve heard it described as me not wanting to be treated like a little kid anymore. They were only ever going to see me as a little kid. And I was 30 at the time. Ten years had been put in. I had offered a different body of work than my brother or my dad ever did — just a different variety.
Maybe it was a matter of wanting to come back and be seen as an adult, or come back and be seen as someone who had accrued all this knowledge. I’ve wrestled Triple H, The Undertaker… been in the ring with Shawn Michaels. You don’t get that knowledge unless you’re in the ring with them, and I felt like I wasn’t being allowed to showcase it.
But as time has gone on, I look back and think a lot of it was immaturity on my part — anger, a lot of anger. Anger can take you very far. A chip on your shoulder can take you very far. I just wanted to show, outside of the WWE bubble — and I’ve talked a lot about the bubble — that I could mobilize an audience to follow me.