Cody Rhodes left AEW in February 2022 only to make his much anticipated WWE return a couple of months later at WrestleMania 38.
During a recent interview with ComicBook.com, Rhodes discussed his heel run prior to his AEW departure, noting that the endgame for the turn was for him to eventually wrestle Sting.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On the planet to wrestle Sting: “I was going to wrestle Sting. I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anybody and nothing was on paper or anything like that. But I can say I got a tremendous offer from AEW creatively, financially, the full package. You won’t hear me say anything bad about AEW or Tony (Khan) or my time there. It was a tremendous offer, but the offer wasn’t right for me. What I wanted to get back to was the first goal that I ever had (winning the WWE Championship). But yeah, that probably would’ve been the endgame. That’s what had been discussed, was to get one (match) with one of my heroes, Sting.”
On how you sometimes have to make a decision not to get stuck: “And it’s one of those things, you can wrestle one of your heroes or you can work with one of your heroes and he can be the head of creative (Paul Levesque), you can’t have it all. And I think one thing I do pride myself on as a wrestler is I will make a decision. It might be a left turn, it might be exactly where you think I’m going, but I will make a decision. I will not get stuck because I felt like I’d been stuck early in my career and never want to be that way again.”
