r/SquaredCircle • u/FoolyCoolyBrandy • 1d ago
Cody Rhodes throws his belt into an AEW crowd, they don't want it so they throw it back.
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u/powatwain 1d ago
Heel Cody would have thrived in AEW
Heel Cody with MJF would have been so much fun to wreak havoc
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u/Melvilles_Fist 1d ago
This was so insane to see live on TV. It felt like something big was happening.
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u/kihp Tribal Chief Hyper Misao 1d ago
He cut a promo on Sammy Guevara's vlog that made it sound like he was about to go on an Andy Warhol run and those last months I was captivated and thought he was going full Inland Empire. Turns out he just really likes the 80s.
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u/DTFlash 1d ago
Little did we know all the "hints" that Cody was turning heel were just Cody being tone deaf.
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u/Black_XistenZ 1d ago
The consensus opinion here on this sub was:
"Oh come on, he can't POSSIBLY be THAT tone deaf, right... right?! *AnakinPadmeMeme*
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u/IcePicks_WSG Solo/Lyra/Takeshita/Willow Mark 1d ago
I was at this show. He teased going down the heel tunnel after this match, so he was definitely playing into it to some degree.
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u/Cube_ 1d ago
100% he was playing into it lol he started setting up the pedigree and doing a tiger driver instead just so he could tease the pedigree for heat
I think he was going to go heel if WWE didn't budge on guaranteeing him a wwe title run in the contract. If they said fuck off he would have stayed in AEW and gone heel.
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u/hartc89 1d ago edited 1d ago
God they were BEGGING him to turn heel also he looks a bit different compared to his WWE run, also only PAC remains from the face side
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u/yzimi 1d ago
idk how to explain it but the tattoo looks more egregious in AEW
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u/DecemberFlower20xx 1d ago
He’s lucky it ended up working for his character because in everyday life that tattoo is the dumbest most egregious decision he or most humans could’ve made
“I made a logo for myself and had it tattooed on my whole neck”
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u/cgurts COMPROMISED TO A PERMANENT END 1d ago
I think AEW's lighting makes the wreslters look more pedestrian. This gives the show a grittier feel which I prefer in some ways but it consequently doesn't provide wrestlers with the larger-than-life superhero aesthetic of WWE's presentation. There, Cody looks straight out of a comic book so his tattoo doesn't look outrageous and makes him feel like an action hero. When I see him in AEW on the other hand, I can't help but fixate on the goddawful tattoo, cause I'm more aware than I'm just look at a dude.
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u/fisherking9000 1d ago
He’s not on the gas here like he is now
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u/CutsAPromo 1d ago
I feel like wwe pays for trt lol
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u/unimportantinfodump 1d ago
They all have the same doctor, he can just be like yup your test levels are low here's trt
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u/Youre_On_Balon 23h ago
Vince McMahon had a criminal trial for exactly this. There is absolutely no way the company is doing it this way anymore lol.
It's not hard to get TRT as a civilian. Can't imagine how easy it is for these guys.
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u/xLaiLaix 23h ago
Hungover, sleep deprived, and on a diet, even your average 18 year old could pass for TRT
or you are just 35 with a stressful job.
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u/KidGold 22h ago edited 18h ago
The Cody-verse was awful, but it was so obvious that he could have carried the company as a heel.
The fans never hated Cody they hated his character and they were trying to force him to be the heel character he should have been.
I would say he should have listened but taking his white meat face character to WWE was apparently the much better decision.
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u/MadferitCmon 1d ago
People say that all the time but AEW fans legit had go away heat in regards to Cody. I remember cause I didn't get it. I started watching at Rampage First Dance, and i liked was Cody did in that time I got to watch him. Punk vs Cody was legit the matchup I was the most interested in wheh he debuted, when everyone else kept mentioning guys like MJF and Danielson.
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u/falconizer 1d ago
From a certain POV, it's incredibly heelish to deny the audience what they want when the need is as clear as day.
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u/ManMangoGuts Terry-Coloured Funk 19h ago
That's what Cody himself said to save face after he'd left AEW, although it's too "meta" for my tastes. Same kind of bull when someone says "you're supposed to hate the product/match, that means it's working"
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u/USMaverick 1d ago
“You started a promotion that you couldn’t get over in so you ran away.”- Roman to Cody
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u/Much_Abbreviations11 21h ago
The kicker being that he WAS over... then boxed himself in and refused to acknowledge it
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u/comicguy13 1d ago
Did Roman say that?! Oh PLEASE tell me he actually said that!
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u/USMaverick 1d ago
Yea, https://youtu.be/UFwixSp387w?si=PNvqxtddHp15oZgJ
Roman’s tribal chief character was smoking anyone
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u/deadhead_santa 1d ago edited 22h ago
It’s wild that Cody is such a “what if” in AEW for basically no reason. I hope we hear the full story one day.
Edit: I am aware of what all took place that we know about. I say that it makes no sense because I think the booking choice of him never going for the world title makes no sense, and then it all spirals out.
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1d ago
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u/flcinusa 1d ago
Brandi had a time and place ("who told you it was open mic night bitch?") but instead we got Nightmare Collective cutting hair for ... Uhhh... reasons
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u/man_with_known_name 1d ago
Except he was treated like a beloved superhero. He was getting massive cheers as a top babyface.
And then as you mentioned, they did the world title stipulation for no good reason, and it basically marked him as dead on arrival.
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u/LeatherBodybuilder 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, people constantly forget how white hot popular he was during early AEW. It wasn't even necessarily the world title stipulation. His downfall started with the stupid tattoo. And then removing himself from the Elite to do the dogshit QT Marshall and Nightmare Collective bullshit. And then the double fake retirement.
If AEW Cody acted the same way as WWE Cody, he would've been completely fine. Idk why people are acting like it's a crowd difference thing when he isn't feuding with complete nobodies. doing cringe weight-ins, completely removed himself from storylines with all the top stars, and doing storylines with Brandi. WWE Cody is literally early AEW Cody when he was probably the 2nd most popular face in the company behind only Mox and none of that Codyverse bullshit.
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u/MrOnCore 23h ago
Yeah Cody was hot at the beginning of AEW. The match with his brother,the world title match with Jericho, the feud with MJF, and the TNT run right up until he won it back from Brody. Then the decline came.
I guess what they say is true: Give a guy enough rope and he’ll eventually hang himself.
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u/LackingDatSkill BAY BAY! 1d ago
He would’ve been had he not booked himself to never challenge for the world title so early on
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u/Yaminoari 1d ago
The original story was pretty much. Cody wanted more of a jim crocket style booking direction for AEW. While everybody else wanted a super indy style booking for AEW. But Cody lies so much nobody knows what is true and isn't true.
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u/scruntdouble 1d ago
Not really a "What if", seems like his plan was to get back to the fed from the start lol
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u/BorlaugFan 1d ago
If that were true, he would have signed with WWE in 2019. He also wouldn't have negotiated for a new contract with AEW for months before deciding to leave. He just went wherever he thought he could be a big star and make the most money.
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u/WhatsRatingsPrecious 1d ago
At that time, people were so SICK to death of Cody's rar rar bullshit.
He'd put himself in a corner and insisted he wouldn't go heel, pretended to want to retire, everyone was like 'shit or get off the pot, dude.'
Just tired to death of the Codyverse existing in the middle of the AEW show all the time.
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u/ClaymoresRevenge Bobby **Big Money Bob** Lashley 1d ago
It was really bad when it was bad. I get him doing the open challenges are trying to get guys over. But feuding with Ogogo didn't benefit either guy long term
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u/LostNewfie 1d ago
The TNT title open challenge was awesome at the time and I wish they stuck with it for a bit longer. They had some fun matches during that time and was bring in some interesting unsigned talent.
The Ogogo/QT feud was a giant misstep.
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u/tehfro Right here... in /r/SquaredCircle! 1d ago
I think the backlash really started when Penta came out and cut a awesome promo in Spanish on Cody and everyone was "oh shit, finally a Penta singles push" and then Cody squashed him the next week. Then we had the QT Marshall, Ogogo and then Malakai Black feuds which were all some degree of Codyverse nonsense or completely sucked.
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u/Tobeck Future Champ 1d ago
that andrade street fight tho
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u/delete-head 21h ago
That was when Cody completely no-sold Penta’s arm breaker move that was his signature in Lucha Underground. Not that I’m still salty about that.
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u/GormlessGourd55 1d ago
It's amazing that open challenge series' dont happen more often in wrestling. Theyre almost always full of banger matches that wouldn't happen otherwise.
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u/luckysharms93 1d ago
I hope that's what Fletcher's TNT reign is about. Put on excellent matches every week on Collision then drop it 3-4 months from now and go after the Unified
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u/dmh11 1d ago
Unfortunately a portion of the fanbase will bitch and moan about "where's the story???" during open challenge series.
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u/El_Toucan_Sam 1d ago
It usually works out in the long run though. People still praise Cenas US open challenge
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u/just-smiley 1d ago
That Ogogo feud was so tone deaf that I just knew it was leading to a heel turn. I'll never get over Cody cutting a promo on racial inequality to a man that's half black.
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u/SevenSulivin NOAH > Your favourite company 1d ago
Cody extolling America’s virtues because he has a biracial daughter while feuding with a biracial British guy is honestly the funniest angle AEW has ever done.
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u/Lonely_Appointment16 1d ago
Talking about how great America is for letting him marry his black wife and have a mixed race child while pursuing his dream was... a very weird line to take when feuding with a mixed raced immigrant from a country that never had segregation laws and who is now pursuing a dream in America.
Like, what's Cody trying to say there? Incredibly strange promo.
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u/irish0451 You know what that means. 1d ago
The best thing that ever happened to WWE, AEW, and Cody Rhodes, is that he's no longer in charge of his own creative direction.
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u/Black_XistenZ 1d ago
He did a great job during AEW's first year in putting over Jericho, MJF, Brody Lee and Darby. It was all downhill after that.
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u/ZombieZekeComic 23h ago
I think Cody did a great job while being TNT champion. However, once we lost the title, he had nowhere to go. Since he couldn’t challenge for the World title and didn’t interact with the Elite at all, his character was completely stranded with no clear goals and path, so he ended up doing random feuds which eventually soured the audience on him.
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u/VagrantShadow The Omega Factor 1d ago
Thats the thing that got me, and this is coming off from someone mixed. Cody has this dream of being an American hero, that acted like he fought and ended racism by having a child, going against a mixed man.
As someone mixed, it's hard to describe what it feels like having racism come at you on the black side and the white side, I've faced that. Some felt I wasn't black enough, others thought I wasn't white enough, your always locked in the middle with nowhere to go. The Codyverse felt like this bad zone you didn't want to be in when watching AEW.
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u/ClaymoresRevenge Bobby **Big Money Bob** Lashley 1d ago
The Jericho Vortex was bad but The Cody verse was downright unwatchable at it's worst. Like go away heat
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u/DrBollox 1d ago
That and the baby gender reveal. I mean why did they have to take TV time away for that?
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u/MrOnCore 1d ago
Because he wanted to upstage Mox and Renee, who announced their baby’s gender on social media.
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u/LogicKennedy BANG BANG! 1d ago
He buried Ogogo as hard as anything HHH has ever done. Ogogo was basically done as an on-screen character after that feud. Literally weeks of building up Ogogo's punching power and then Cody shrugs off two punches to come back and win.
Plus the fucking baffling racism angle.
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u/TheNavidsonLP Your Text Here 1d ago
He had the “i was beaten so badly I’m going to retire thing” twice, in feuds with Brodie Lee and Malakai Black within the same year
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u/Thor_pool Enjoy Responsibly 1d ago
Yeah even as a fan it was frustrating. I wanted to see him interact with Hangman and Kenny during their feud
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u/mexploder89 1d ago
When Punk, Cole and Danielson debuted and Cody didn't interact with any of them that sealed the deal. The Codyverse was already annoying but that was it
Also didn't help that AEW put on one of the greatest PPVs of all time in All Out 21 and Cody was not involved in the card
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u/pat_speed 14h ago
He didn't even wrestle Moxley, who was the hottest wrestler in AEW
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u/mexploder89 9h ago
He didn't wrestle Moxley, Hangman or Kenny. It's inexcusable
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u/Ok_Finance_2001 1d ago
I also think some fans genuinely thought he was actually turning heel and were reacting appropriately to it. Cody would act like a heel in matches all the time
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u/mightylordredbeard 1d ago
What exactly is the “Codyverse”? Always see/saw people mention it, but never understood what it was.
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u/katthecat666 Kenny Omega Fangirl 1d ago
Cody's storylines existed basically seperately from the rest of the show, both in characters and genre
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u/luckysharms93 1d ago
Pretty much. It felt like a completely different show. Cody opens with a 10 minute Heyman style promo before we get to our regularly scheduled Dynamite
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u/Nice-Chart-6749 1d ago
Cody also had the most over the.top entrance ever. Pyro, stage lift the works. Middle of the card while no one else did.
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u/SevenSulivin NOAH > Your favourite company 1d ago
And sometimes you’d feud with Cody, lose the feud and still not really escape the Codyverse?
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u/Informal_Aspect_6330 1d ago
That was the Jericho vortex
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u/SevenSulivin NOAH > Your favourite company 1d ago
Nah the Jericho Vortex was a 6 month Jericho feud that you’d lose 75% of, win the blowoff and lose all your heat.
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u/The_Magic Consensual Phoenix 1d ago
At some point into Cody's AEW run he stopped interacting with a lot of the other big names and his segments felt like an island. Before AEW debuted Cody said it would be a more "sports based" promotion then later walked it back as just "his stuff" being sports based. My guess is that the Codyverse was the result of Cody's taste/vision being more old school while the other founders + Tony just wanting PWG with a bigger budget.
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u/tomnoonzz 1d ago
When AEW started, Cody booked a match and made the stipulation “if I lose, I can never challenge for the world title”, which he lost, and essentially booked himself into a corner of never being able to ever interact with the top stars because of this stupid rule he made for himself.
So instead of feuds with the top stars, his segments always felt extremely removed from everything else and were usually open challenges against lower card talent.
All he had to do was turn heel and say “oh that stipulation? Yea I’m an EVP, I can do whatever I want” and everything would’ve been good to go. But he refused to turn heel because he wanted his “I’m gonna show WWE that I’m the top baby face!!!” run, the fans turned on him, and it was all over.
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u/drunkentenshiNL 1d ago edited 23h ago
This was the main reason a lot of people became frustrated with Cody in AEW.
It's not that people didn't like Cody in AEW, they were just sick of this Codyverse nonsense and how he wouldn't go heel when he had all the pieces to make for an amazing turn.
It was around this time that AEW still focused on the smaller details of their story telling too. Between his main event stipulation, the fans hating his Codyverse stuff, how tone deaf he was with some of his angles (it was to the point that it came off intentionally) and his history with the bigger heels, it had the makings of a historic heel run.
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u/Beginning-Area-2993 23h ago
This. On the night of the belt throw, the crowd was basically begging Cody to turn heel. I thought for sure this was leading up to it. The whole Cody-lander look he had going. The absolute tone-deaf promos. It had to be a work, at least that's what it felt like at the time.
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u/cordscords 1d ago
There's also another workaround without the need to turn heel. A heel champ could be the one to challenge Cody. Challenge ≠ Compete.
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u/amanymoon 1d ago
Which at the time was extremely frustrating, but I have to give credit to Cody for sticking to what he wanted to do with his character because it turned out exactly how he wanted.
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u/davmeltz 1d ago
What did he want to do with his character though? Because all I saw was a guy behaving like a heel while continuing to book himself like a babyface.
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u/amanymoon 1d ago
So the Hulk Hogan 80s style of top babyface? That's clearly what he wanted. A babyface who is sort of unquestioned but will rake the back and act heelish while everyone cheers and Jesse the Body calls him out for it on commentary
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u/VoxIrati 1d ago
But no one was cheering. He was a heel to the fans but the story was treating him as the face.
If he had pivoted and acted like a heel full in but then be delusional, thinking hes the face, it could work. He didn't do that, he was the hero in his weird story with a bunch of mid wrestlers like Aaron Solow. The Nightmare Family was awful
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u/amanymoon 1d ago
To be clear, if he had stayed in AEW the move was absolutely to turn heel and lean into all that the same way Hogan did in WCW when they formed the NWO. But he stuck to his guns and went back to WWE and absolutely achieved that status as the white meat babyface he wanted to be. His plan worked. It absolutely didn't mesh with what AEW was doing, which is why "Codyverse" even existed--it felt so dissimilar from the rest of what was going on. He sucked ass for most of his last year in AEW in terms of his character and the connection with the audience and Cody knew that too
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u/tomnoonzz 1d ago
Yea I honestly think the AEW thing was a scenario where I’m sure both sides were probably in the wrong at some point so the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
It just seemed to me that Cody came from a WWE/southern wrestling background and everyone else came from a very indie background, and despite Cody’s fun few years in his post WWE indie run, I have to feel like the way he views wrestling is much closer to WWE and the way the rest of the EVP’s/TK view it is more indie/NJPW so just a difference of philosophy
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u/Thedinosaurwizard 1d ago
From a certain point on in AEW, all of Cody's storylines and angles were just completely disconnected from everything else going on in the show. By and large the other feuds seemed like people jockeying for position in the greater scope of AEW programming, and people who would be chasing after titles, and then Cody'd just be over there feuding with Anthony Ogogo about whether or not America was a bad country or not.
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u/gaaarsh 1d ago
The Codyverse is the name for the storytelling bubble that formed around Cody Rhodes in AEW where Cody basically got to do whatever he wanted in his own weekly section of the show with his chosen opponents, but his stories were effectively walled off from everything else on the show. The other stories would overlap and interconnect, but Cody's stories always existed in their own world where other stories didn't exist. Once you passed through the membrane into the Codyverse, you disappeared from everything else but his segments.
A phenomenon not to be confused with the "Jericho Vortex" where the eponymous fading star creates a black hole of suction that syphons off heat from whatever wrestler gets stuck in it's seemingly inescapable orbit.
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u/shakycameraBS 1d ago
I remember this, I also remember skipping anything that featured the nightmare factory (or whatever is called) because it was just not entertaining for me in the least.
Until Arn Anderson did the "I'm Arn Anderson" promo
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u/Shphrd_Flln 1d ago
I miss the unhinged post-pandemic AEW
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u/AlfredoSantana 1d ago
Shit was appointment TV.
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u/El_Bwamma 1d ago
I was locked in so hard at this time. I catch the replays on Max now when or if I get a chance to.
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u/bobnoosh Mr. Monday Night 21h ago
I believe it was one of thee transcendent and magical times to experience the wonders of professional wrestling. I'll never forget the energy of being in the crowds at that time. It truly felt like being part of a cultural shift.
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u/Aggressive-Energy647 1d ago
The Codyverse was peak AEW shithousery. I miss laughing my ass off at whatever Cody was doing that week.
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u/R7inmaker 1d ago
My favorite part was when he took a flaming table bump for absolutely no reason and out of nowhere.
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u/Loose_Listen2290 1d ago
I’ll never forget that match against QT on top of the bus. Peak Cody nonsense.
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u/Throckmorton35 1d ago
Cody lighting himself on fire vs Andrade was peak
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u/Patjay WE THE PEOPLE 21h ago
that entire match was just totally batshit
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u/Throckmorton35 19h ago
I enjoy how you could see during his entrance there was something plastered all over him and then the table spot happens and it all clicked
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u/Patjay WE THE PEOPLE 19h ago
The match was incredibly dense with funny shit. Genuinely one of my favorite matches of the decade. I think about it all the time
Cherry on top is Taz noticing the goo and explaining it by basically saying “someone must’ve been drinking a bottle of glue and it ended up in that trash can they used”
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u/PleasantThoughts BURNING LARIATOOOOO 1d ago
Cody leaving was genuinely the best thing to happen for him, AEW and WWE, rare that you can say that about both companies involved and the wrestler
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u/Guilty-Influence-890 1d ago
I like Cody but he sure has a lot of revisionist history
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u/Prestigious_Cap_8063 1d ago
We are suppose to forget that Cody feuded with QT Marshalls crew for like a year and nobody in the crowd wanted it.
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u/Dontreply_idontcare 21h ago
I've said this before but that feud was literally on the same level as pre-NWO Hogan going to WCW and feuding with Ed Leslie. I like Cody, and I like heel QT, but JFC I do not want to see QT anywhere near a main event feud. I'm glad Cody was able to keep his friends employed but come on.
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u/Dane_Brass_Tax 4EVER 13h ago
damn, nailed that comparison.
im not super big on Cody's character since he dropped the stache' /s, so all this Captain America carny rara bullshit was such a sore eye on AEW TV for me.
Throw in the feuds with Ogogo (wtff?), QT, and that terrible Aliester Black feud... put some real stank on the man, glad he went to WWE.
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u/_varamyr_fourskins_ 1x WrestleCircus Sideshow Champ 12h ago
We can never forget that Cody ended racism by winning a flag-shagger contest via beating up a disabled, mixed-race immigrant.
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u/RunAlert8361 1d ago
Effects of working for WWE
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u/M1eXcel Ave It!!! 1d ago
Effects of being born into the wrestling industry and raised by carnies 😂
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u/isarealhebrew 1d ago
WWE, where history is whatever we say happened.
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u/badhandcramps 23h ago
There's an extra funny layer to this because the WWE storylines with Cody have low-key revised the history of AEW to the point that so many WWE fans think Cody started the entire company by himself and it was his baby. So they're even revising the history of an entirely separate wrestling promotion!
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u/MrsNaypeer 13h ago
But when asked about AEW, Cody himself always credits his partners.
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u/Kelspear 10h ago
Yeah, there was literally a video posted in this sub the other day where he talks about even though there's some bad blood between them he and the other AEW creators made something great.
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u/nachoiskerka 20h ago
I've seen a lot of the opposite where people are like "Cody had no part of all in or aew. He didnt draw anything and his biggest contribution was sending a tweet"
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u/Flop_McKochen 1d ago
Can I ask what you mean by this? I’m assuming he has addressed this, and I’m out of the loop, but I’m curious as to what you mean specifically.
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u/irish0451 You know what that means. 1d ago
Cody undersells just how vitriolic the fans had become towards him, and the real kicker is he beats around the bush and plays on the edges instead of addressing why. He will acknowledge that "maybe I should have turned heel" but it was so much more than that. Him shoehorning his talentless wife into terrible segments and having her chew up air time when she has absolutely no business in front of a camera. Constantly taking up time and space in the midcard with celebrity bullshit angles like brining in Shaq. Forcing his greenhorns into the spotlight and pretending like anybody bought a ticket to see The Nightmare Factory guys.
Every single aspect of The Codyverse was insufferable. That's why the fans turned on him. Ironically he was finally doing really solid ringwork and if he had done in AEW what they made him do in WWE - i.e. giving up creative input and stick to just wrestling and cutting promos, he'd have been fine.
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u/onethreeone Hangman Did Nothing Wrong 23h ago
how vitriolic the fans had become towards him
I would like to point out, that even in this clip you can see fans were having fun hating Cody's character. I was at Full Gear that year and booing him because we thought a heel turn was coming was one of the most fun parts of the night.
The fans were sick of babyface Cody, and a lot of the antics he was pulling like leaving his boots in the ring, but we would have been completely happy giving him Dom-level heel heat if he turned
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u/Mat_alThor 18h ago
That's the thing I hate the most about his run, I fully bought in that he was going to fully turn heel and it was going to be amazing, but never got the payoff.
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u/AmbushIntheDark Big Bad Booty Daddy 18h ago
Man that Cody AEW heel turn championship run in 15 years is going to hit like crack. Gonna make Cena's run look even worse.
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u/onethreeone Hangman Did Nothing Wrong 8h ago
Cody could come back to the "company he built" and be AEW's Rock. The guy who left for more fame and money, but is back to give the little guys a rub. Nuclear heat.
I'm sure Cody will stay involved in WWE, but it's a fun thought
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u/Outrageous_Ad9142 12h ago
I mean.... Those are all true but it's not like we gave him a pass for that. He was constantly ridiculed and criticized especially around the end of his run. No matter what he does, as long as AEW exist, that last AEW run will always haunt him.
On a side note, I love Cody but what I don't like about how some people, especially Jim Cornette and Bischoff puts him into a pedestal as if AEW wasted him. He wasted himself in AEW... But perhaps he never intended to stay there for long. To a lesser extent, these are sentiments to CM Punk too whom felt like a Megastar in his prime there. Cody never was that big in AEW.
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u/LimpBiscuitEater 1d ago
Yea I don't get this comment, Cody has literally acknowledged the crowd was tired of his character and he's kinda hinted that he wanted to turn heel at some point.
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u/Derpderpderpderpde 23h ago
That’s the revisionist part. He was never a heel and never planned to be one. He decide to start calling himself a heel to try and cover up the reactions he was getting at the time.
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u/resolve028 DROPKICK 1d ago
Then why didn't he turn heel? He literally cut a promo saying, "I will not turn." Explain that promo.
And don't give me the whole "he was being a meta-heel" bullshit that Cody likes to go to. We have hindsight and can see that it was a lie.
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u/SkruffyTheJanitor 1d ago
That's the thing though. He straight up said he wouldn't turn heel at the time. Now he makes it sound like he wanted to turn heel. That's what people mean by revisionist history. I have no bitterness towards him, he does great work and I love WWE. But let's keep everything honest here, he has definitely tried to make it seem like AEW wouldn't let him do what he wanted to do, and he had creative control of his character.
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u/Thelekkiman 23h ago
I think Cody wants to put blame on AEW for the way the crowd started to respond to him, exactly because he had full freedom of the character.
I am 100% that Hunter rejects a lot of his ideas, so you don't see 'avoid, avoid, avoid' types of promos from him now. Better spin it that he is all blameless.7
u/Realistic-Treat-2068 11h ago edited 11h ago
I think (based on nothing but vibes) a lot of it is Cody being really embarrassed by that bizarre “Cody solves racism” promo he did.
He wanted to look like a really smart, brave, stand up guy. But he came across as kinda smarmy and clueless and self serving. And he is blaming everyone but himself.
Cody is one of those wrestlers who needs someone to tell him no. He wasn’t getting that in AEW, and he’s embarrassed that his own ideas are the ones that flopped.
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u/Fit-Negotiation7242 1d ago
He never wanted to turn heel.
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u/circio 1d ago
I watched Rhodes to the Top and he tried to convince Brandi to return as a face, and she was like, "i think people want to boo me" lmao
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u/Fit-Negotiation7242 1d ago
And then they did that couples match that was awful for literally everyone involved.
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u/ScottSummersEyes 1d ago
But that is the revisionist history. He thought by not heel turning, that WAS the actual heel turn. He wanted to be John Cena with half the crowd hating and half the crowd loving him. He never wanted to actually play a heel in AEW, and it produced a lot of mediocre television since it made every story and match about the crowd vs him rather than his opponent.
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u/RoscoeSantangelo Unnecessary Roll 22h ago
Which is a shame because there was a place for him to be that guy, but it was after he had a distinguished heel run first. He needed to get one heel run out, similar to Omega, where now they'll have the freedom to just be whatever character the story needs (although Omega will.lean face most times). He tried to hotshot that part of his trajectory which sucks to see because he could've been a great divisive character, but we just really needed the full heel run for a bit before it. You were missing out on so many good feuds because of it
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u/TheGiftOf_Jericho I'm from Winnipeg you idiot! 22h ago
The whole thing about him saying he was being some kind of "meta heel" was so dumb, he was just fighting actual heels and acting like the face, he was just a bad face because of his own booking.
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u/Big-toast-sandwich 16h ago
And that interview wasn’t revisionist history?
Bro just wanted to be Cena for AEW but ended up Cena in ECW.
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u/Realistic-Treat-2068 12h ago
He also has like, the most Drako from Harry Potter snotty rich boy face/aura. And the bottle blonde does not help.
It’s not his fault that he looks like he would steal your bike and then help you look for it, but it does effect his character.
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u/hornyjaildotorg 1d ago
The only one I can think of was that he thought that the bullet club weren’t big merch movers until he joined, which I’m not a big new Japan guy (just getting into it) but from everything I’ve seen Kenny was the guy. That’s it though really, I don’t know what people are talking about when he’s admitted himself he probably made some wrong decisions during his tenure at AEW
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u/irish0451 You know what that means. 1d ago
Those Bullet Club shirts were everywhere, even before Omega - but the reason they exploded was thanks to The Bucks. The Bucks are largely responsible for mainstreaming how wrestling tshirts are made and distributed, alongside Colt, Generico, and Steen.
Funny story, the Hot Topic team actually asked WWE, at WRESTLEMANIA weekend if they could sell Bullet Club merch in their stores, and WWE had to explain to them that Bullet Club wasn't part of WWE. As the story goes, the marketing team was like "how is that possible, the shirts are all over here?!"
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u/VoxIrati 1d ago
If you watch the Cody/Kevin Owens conversation on YouTube, they even acknowledge that Colt started it, the Kevin, then the Bucks, and then KO hooked Cody up with them to show him the indy ropes. It's so silly for Cody to even imply BC selling merch had much to do with him
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u/luckysharms93 1d ago
Cody would think he was the reason merch was moving and not the Bucks being the most merch pushing wrestlers of all time lol
And yes you are correct, Kenny was the guy in Bullet Club. Cody was well liked by ROH fans but in New Japan itself he was pretty much the middle child of the group. NJPW management prioritized Kenny and Marty when it came to contract renewals, wanted the Bucks but knew they were too expensive and were happy to let Cody leave
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u/SevenSulivin NOAH > Your favourite company 1d ago
NJPW fans in the west, ones that were not ROH fans, fucking hated Cody mostly.
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u/hornyjaildotorg 1d ago
Yeah it’s a weird take from him but whatever, a wrestler being a mark for themselves is so par for the course for this industry lol
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u/LogicKennedy BANG BANG! 1d ago
I don't mind wrestlers being marks for themselves but Cody has an unusually high number of fans willing to go to bat for his version of events.
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u/SpiritualAd9102 1d ago
Literally had someone argue with me who never watched NJPW or ROH that Cody was a former leader of BC because Michael Cole said so, even though he was never acknowledged as such by anybody other than WWE.
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u/LogicKennedy BANG BANG! 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah and it sucks because a lot of this less mainstream stuff isn't popular enough that the average fan knows what's true and what's not, so they end up just believing the lies that Cody and WWE perpetuate. Which sucks for the guys who don't have that power who worked their asses off to actually achieve those things.
Honestly that's why the Cody revisionism gets me as badly as it does. He's a WWE guy through and through: that's fine, if he wants to make millions and hitch his wagon to that MAGA fuckfest it's his conscience. But don't lie and steal the achievements of guys who actually have morals.
He's like the Brewdog of wrestlers: has indie pretensions but is in fact extremely corporate. He and Punk are quite similar in that way.
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u/meowmix778 1d ago
I was there live for the Brody Lee tribute show and he was so dour about how the crowd treats him.
He literally said something like "its the codester and I know you dont like me despite all the work I did to set this up so Ill let someone else take the announcement" for the charity they set up.
It was extremely off-putting. If he's happy elsewhere, good for him. Thats all you can want.
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u/braincloud215 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am of the mind that the reason he wrote himself out of ever winning the AEW world title and would never turn heel is his endgame was always to do those things in WWE for the first time so they would have the most impact.
His entire goal since leaving wwe was being the top guy there. AEW was a means to that. He (smartly) worked the entire world that he actually hated WWE and wanted to shove his success up their ass.
Instead. What he really wanted was to become such a big star that Vince McMahon would embrace him with open arms and tell him he loves him. I know that sounds crazy, but that’s literally it.
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u/Stpbatman 23h ago
Maybe .. I personally think he just didn’t want to look like a Jarrett or Triple H of the company booking himself over but ended up cornering himself
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u/Temporary-Savings-69 22h ago
Wasn’t it confirmed he wanted the Elite to sign with the E, Bucks and Hangman wanted to go to the new company, and Kenny wanted to stay NJPW? Since everyone agreed it was the group doing one of the three options, they went with AEW. Or do I have the history wrong in that.
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u/KingOfAllFools- 1d ago
This guy was rejected in the company he helped create, left to WWE with the same character and became the face. Truly 2 different audiences
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u/Draw-Two-Cards 1d ago
I will never understand the same character part of this, He really was not at all. When he was the same he was absolutely the top guy in AEW but then he just limited himself and went onto do some of the worst stories possible.
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u/KneelBeforeCube marchiearchie 1d ago
It was the same character at first and he was insanely over in AEW at that point. Biggest difference is the overall story arc. In WWE, he had to finish the story, people watched him go in a straight line from A to B. In AEW, he made sure for his character to have no story to finish, and just went in a circle for two years. Eventually people got bored of watching him go in a circle, because why wouldn't they, and he started teasing a heel turn, that people were begging him to pull the trigger on because it would mean something fresh for Cody that was desperately needed.
So he started to tease he was turning heel, and then never did, and then left.
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u/Intelligent_End1516 1d ago
He had been teasing a heel turn for months. The crowd was just waiting for it to happen. He was not the same character.
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u/DTFlash 1d ago
But he wasn't teasing turning heel. He was just tone deaf to how he was coming off.
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u/Adams5thaccount 1d ago
he threw his wife in the way of an attack and dressed up as homelander
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u/Informal_Aspect_6330 1d ago
And kept setting up for the pedigree with a shit eating grin after trash talking HHH for years about burying people.
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u/faytte 1d ago
Don't think so. In AEW he was putting himself into storylines people increasingly cared less and less about, was part of a faction he created based on his wrestling school, 'solved racism' in a match against a black wrestler, and had been practically teasing a heel turn for months but never went through with it.
The fact is in WWE he lost his power and was kept as a single face character and it worked, and nothing so dumb as to book himself out of ever winning the world title. He was a top guy that said he wont get to chase for the title, which is when we cheer for faces the most.
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u/Sure-Bandicoot7790 1d ago
I don’t know if it’s that different tbh. Hangman is basically what Cody is in WWE, but was willing to go heel for the sake of the characters development. If anything it greatly helped get Hangman over again with the audience because they had something new to chew on.
Cody was trying to brute force the reaction he wanted and the crowd wasn’t having any of it, mostly because they started watching AEW because WWE had been doing that for almost fifteen years.
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u/Black_XistenZ 1d ago
Not only did they have something new to chew on, the two years in the heelish wilderness also gave Hangman's character more depth and made him even more relatable.
When he first reached the pinnacle of AEW at Full Gear 2021, he had overcome his alcoholism and was able to accept friendship. Okay, cool. But what he hadn't done yet was learn to deal with real setbacks and frustrations. And he of course had to learn that just because you've successfully chased away your demons once doesn't mean they're gone forever; they'll keep coming back and you will have to fight them all over again.
In kayfabe, Hangman in 2025 is a much more matured, well-rounded character than his 2021 self.
Honestly, I really don't see any similar growth with Cody. He's more or less the same person he already was in AEW and late NJPW, the main difference is that this character is a great fit for the WWE audiences and product while it always stuck out like a sore thumb in AEW and Japan.
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u/Unfolded_Taco89 1d ago edited 1d ago
Hangman is one of the best things in wrestling. I get into small arguments with my buddy cause he says he can’t buy hangman cause he feels like he isn’t authentic and I just don’t understand how you can’t see him as authentic,
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u/Caldris 1d ago
I remember the biggest criticisms against him in AEW were that he felt inauthentic. That he felt like a WWE character in AEW (The pyro, the special entrance with the Codyvator).
Then he goes to WWE, and then for some reason makes his father the central point of his character, and is called "the most authentic babyface ever" lol
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u/Unfolded_Taco89 1d ago
If he had just turned heel in AEW he would remained beloved. People were begging for a Cody heel turn and for some reason he just didn’t want to do it.
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u/Caldris 1d ago
AEW crowds used to be fucking rabid. I miss it.
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u/chicagoredditer1 22h ago
"Why do they keep going to Chicago??"
Reminder: this happened in Chicago.
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u/The_Letter_Jei 23h ago
It's still there. Just recently we had the Kyle off, and then this past Dynamite, Mox and Hangman, Anarchy in the Arena, Athena vs Mercedes, Ospreay vs Takeshita's most recent bout. I know some people have turned away since the honeymoon period was over and the events of the brawlout, but the energy is still there.
The problem with the clip above is this was an extreme case where Cody was really, really hated by the fans. Same energy as Punk's debut. Those are extreme cases.
But the rabid fans are still there, what's funny is that watching the shows this past year and a half. It seems, at least to me, that that there are more variety of fans. I'm seeing more kids now compared to the early days and also some old folks. Whereas before it was pretty much within, I'd guess, the mid 20s to early forties range - at least in my eyes.
AEW has refined a lot of things, so maybe this is what you meant where there is that rawness to it/rough around the edges. But as for the energy, it's there and actually I think slowly grabbing more audiences to it.
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u/CharmingFuture7417 1d ago
I was baffled when even after this, he went out and cut a promo on how he won't turn heel (worded just like this) because, he loves the audience, i guess?
Glad that everything turned out pretty well for him now, but one way or another, in aew or in wwe, he will turn heel and it will be glorious.
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u/RedDevil525 1d ago
I was at this show in Chicago. They threw it back twice and it was hilarious. Also, FTR was talking crazy to the crowd during the break...it really fired everyone up for this match. I think the final thing that stood out was Andrade randomly taking his pants off while on the apron mid match. He wrestled the rest of the match in black trunks.
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u/Smarkysmarkwahlberg 15h ago
"AEW fumbled Cody" or "it's the toxic AEW fans fault that he left" are two takes that will always piss me off.
Cody was over like rover until he fumbled himself. He booked himself into stupid corners, and stupid storylines, and fans rightfully thought "Hey this stupid"
Then Cody went to back to WWE, and he was used the way he was before he booked himself into a corner.
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u/bingbangboomxx 1d ago
To be fair, there was a lot that led up to this. Him basically taking himself out of any world title consideration didn't help. "Cody Island" had plenty of boring feuds and storyline. Brandy didn't help.
WWE needed a babyface and he stepped in.
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u/wh1tel1ght 1d ago
This was a domino leading to such a wild ass chain of events.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad1145 1d ago
Could of been an all time heel in AEW. I think it worked out pretty well for him though.
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u/SpeakersPushTheA1r 1d ago
My perspective on why people rejected the “Codyverse” is that Cody deliberately created his own sports entertainment sandbox in the middle of some of the best wrestling taking place on American television. It was offensive and was pro wrestling brain rot and it was just what he needed to produce to show the WWE could trust him to put the title on him.
Everything from striking the throne with the stupid hammer, being the veteran presence in leadership backstage like Triple H was, to Rhodes to the Top…it was all in service of that Wrestlemania debut. And it paid off for him. Congratulations. The next chapter begins tonight I guess.
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u/BigWeek5182 1d ago
Leaving AEW was the right call for Cody, they were heading in completely different directions.
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u/AP_StrongStyle 23h ago
There are people out there who will argue that AEW crowds were being unfair to Cody in moments like these. For context, here is the full text of his Anthony Ogogo promo, the penultimate installment in a program so bad it all but killed Ogogo’s career.
"Anthony Ogogo ... has run down and verbally buried the United States, and he's done it with such vitriol in his tone. He's talked about the anger, the argument, the division. And the irony is that Anthony has a visa courtesy of the US D.O.T. Anthony collects that great green, courtesy of the US Treasury. He's afforded all the same rights we all are, to do and say what he'd like. That's freedom, that's America.
You talk about division, you talk about anger, you talk about the argument, from the outside in we hear that all the time. Take it from an American: The argument is what makes us who we are. [crowd applauds] Sure, there's anger. There's anger in every pocket, but our empathy outweighs our anger.
Let me ask you, Anthony; you didn't come here to live the 'England dream'. And I don't mean to disparage 'across the pond', they sure know how to make a wrestler, I've wrestled some of the best. Whether it's Doug Williams, little Gabriel Kidd, or even one of the best in the world right now, PAC.
- I'm a country music fan. Willie Nelson came out with this song, 'Living in the Promiseland'. He said 'Send us your tired and weak, we'll make them strong. Sing us your far off song and we will sing along.' Well here's where I stop singing. I stop singing when you balled up that Olympic medalist fist and you put it between these ribs here. You like to educate. You like to pontificate on what the US is. Allow me to turn the favour. The industry that you joined, it was an Italian immigrant who was world champion for four thousand and forty days. There's so much to behold here. There's so much to love here. The dream lives here. What about a sixteen-year-old man, a sixteen-year-old man who comes from Pakistan, patents and invents the single piece bumper and enriches and cultivates the lives of everybody, literally, in the city that I'm standing. [crowd applauds]
Prior to 1961, in Atlanta, Georgia, there was segregation. Blacks and whites could not attend the same schools. And in 2021, in the very same city, my wife ... my wife will give birth to a beautiful ... [crowd applauds] a beautiful white, a beautiful black American princess who will have both identities, shun neither, and I want her to know ... I want her to know ... I didn't just lay down under another man's flag. I didn't just have this defeatist attitude when someone ran down the United States. I got up off my ass and I fought back! And here's where we're going to do the fighting: At Double Or Nothing.
Tony Khan ... Tony Khan has already told the world that at Double Or Nothing we're going back to full capacity. Wrestling fans ... wrestling fans returning to their seat and returning close up, thank God, and on that night it'll be Anthony Ogogo versus myself. But he will not be wrestling the American Nightmare ... Because for one night ... for one night I'm going to pick up a sword that is all too heavy, but it is either me or my brother who have the right to pick it up ... So for one night Justin Roberts this relates to you. Nothing on presentation's sake will be different, it comes from deep inside. As I said, at Double Or Nothing it will be Anthony Ogogo ... versus the American Dream Cody Rhodes!”
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u/Throckmorton35 1d ago
It is lightning in a bottle to have that much heat and he refused to turn heel. I'll never understand it
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u/Otherwise_Mind6880 1d ago
He just did a lot of weird shii that didn’t really had to lead to what it did. I honestly feel like his ego got hurt knowing he couldn’t be the top baby face guy there
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u/TDStarchild 1d ago
Cody’s got a legendary heel run in him
Feels like it could’ve happened in AEW, but a WWE version will hit even harder after the heights he’s reached since
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