It’s been four years since Cody Rhodes and his wife, Brandi Rhodes, left AEW, and fan speculation about the reason behind it persists.
The pair announced they would be leaving AEW in February 2022, and months later, Cody returned to WWE at WrestleMania 38.
Since then, Cody has reflected on his AEW tenure and made vague allusions about what went wrong near the end of his AEW run. During an appearance on Bill Simmons’ podcast last year, he stated, There’s clearly bad blood, but there’s also clearly respect and love.”
Cody spoke again about his AEW departure when he appeared on The Breakfast Club. He credited Brandi for her “selfless” decision not to talk about why they left AEW, believing that helped them both move forward. He also spoke about the “narratives” around their departure.
“Our departure from when we left the company we were with and helped create, and that was AEW, it came down to her deciding to not talk about it, that departure,” Cody said on The Breakfast Club. “Like, ‘We’re not going to talk about it. We’re moving on. Did bad stuff happen? Good stuff happened too. I’m not going to talk about it.’ “And one of the sad things about not talking about why we left and the departure, one of the difficult things was narratives get created. Stories get told, podcasts happen, fans literally think they know what happened when no one’s been even close, and what I would say is the selfless part, she lives with that. She owns that. She respects not just here, but the place we left enough to, ‘I’m not going to talk about that.’ They’re good. They’re out of here. That was very, very helpful for us, and again, good stuff happened there too, but that’s what I mean by selfless, because she lives with that.”
Cody previously teased that if he were to ever write a book, a huge chapter would be locked away, seemingly referring to an AEW section.
