Cody Rhodes feels Roman Reigns ‘fired one off’ with the line about his AEW run, jokes that it was mean

Cody Rhodes jokes about the line Roman Reigns dropped about AEW, recalls his WrestleMania 29 match being cut and talks his pec injury

Photo Courtesy: WWE

That line was a mean comment from Reigns, Cody jokingly said. 

On the lead up to Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns’ Undisputed WWE Universal Championship match at WrestleMania 39, one of their in-ring segments took place on the March 20th Monday Night Raw

In that segment, Reigns stated that Rhodes started a promotion, couldn’t get over and he ran away from it. Rhodes further reacted to that comment during his sit-down chat with Ariel Helwani. He felt like Reigns ‘fired one off’ and joked that it was a mean remark. 

I felt like he fired one off about me not getting over in my own company and I thought, okay. That was mean. That was mean.

When Rhodes came back to WWE at WrestleMania 38, he went on to compete at two Premium Live Events before he had to step away and he returned seven months later. Cody feels he would be in the same position he’s in now had he not gotten injured. 

I get it (the thought of me not being on fire if there was no pec injury), in terms of, oh, it’s hot and then naturally, it’s gonna cool down. The only thing I can say is whatever happened at WrestleMania last year, just the general feeling of that return and what it created, I don’t know if it would have tempered. I don’t know, I really don’t. I’d like to say, hey, the challenges, keep it hot. I think I was up to the challenge. The only reason I know how to field it, know how to navigate it and I think had I stuck around, you know, I don’t recall in terms of every step of the direction, I think if I stuck around, no pec injury, I think we’d still be here. I said this to Mr. Heyman in the ring and this is one of those moments where it got very real for a second. I said, ‘I heard about all these people that Roman was gonna wrestle this year. I heard about all these people. It was always gonna be me’ and that’s just to me. To me, I felt like it was always gonna be me. There wasn’t a plan laid out by anybody other than me. I just couldn’t see myself going for anything less. You come out after WrestleMania, you talk about winning a title. Well, that should be where you go and that’s where we stand Sunday. An opportunity to win this thing that the old man couldn’t win and the thing I could never win so…

Back in 2013, Cody Rhodes was supposed to be on the WrestleMania 29 card. It was going to be Cody, Aron Stevens and The Garcia Twins (Nikki & Brie Garcia) taking on Tyrus, Matt Bloom, Trinity Fatu (Naomi) and Ariane Andrew. 

The match was scrapped and the aftermath for the women in the match was recorded for Total Divas. He theorizes that the match was never supposed to happen and it being ‘cut’ was for Total Divas. Rhodes added that there was a point when he was not the biggest fan of P. Diddy, who performed that night and his performance ran long. 

Well there’s a part that happened that people may not know (concerning WrestleMania 29). You’re referring to my match getting cut. So it did get cut at the 11th hour but after some Jesse Ventura-style conspiracy theory on it, I don’t think the match was ever supposed to happen, because they were filming Total Divas at the time and that was a big plot thread. That makes me more mad. No (I did not know this at the time). If I’m a lamb to slaughter for Total Divas, which people liked Total Divas. It’s still like the standard in terms of when you do these wrestling reality shows but yeah, I would have liked… let me in! Let me make a scene, let me be part of that. I wanna be in on that but here was the thing that people don’t know, our match got cut. Vince (McMahon) stood up, he told us, ‘Hey guys, we gotta do it tomorrow’ and what I hated the most was everyone in there was like, ‘Alright! Yeah!’ And I just was staring a hole through him. You know, I knew I couldn’t fist fight him. Obviously, that wasn’t on my mind but I didn’t want him to think I was happy. I didn’t want him to think, oh cool. It’s just the biggest event that we have every year that we’re all ready to rock for isn’t gonna happen. It made me not like P. Diddy too because he had a musical performance and it was real long and I thought, we could have done the match in the beginning of this freaking musical thing but either way, so, afterwards, I stare a hole through him, I’m very upset. I’m sure he couldn’t care less. I go and sit under the stage because I just didn’t wanna freak out. You don’t wanna lash out at anybody. People are doing their jobs, working hard and Mania’s moving on with or without me. So I went and sat under the stage and I’m looking down, I felt this foot kick my foot and I look up and it was Donald Trump because he was walking back. He had his whole posse here with him. I think that’s the year he went in the Hall of Fame or so and he’s walking back and he’s like, ‘Excuse me young man’ so I had to shimmy my legs to the side for these 50 people that he had with him to go by. But yeah, I had to get out of the way for Donald. It was kind of a sobering moment, like hey, life is moving on.

Before night two of WrestleMania 39, check out POST Wrestling’s review of WrestleMania night one

If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the original source with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions. 

About Andrew Thompson 8251 Articles
A Washington D.C. native and graduate of Norfolk State University, Andrew Thompson has been covering wrestling since 2017.