The “We Want Cody” movement had millions of fans fighting for Cody Rhodes to get his WrestleMania 40 spot back. Ava was dealing with something completely different at the same time.
The Rock’s daughter was about to appear at NXT Vengeance Day just two days after her father seemingly took Cody’s match against Roman Reigns. WWE knew what was coming, too. Before Ava even appeared in front of the crowd, she was pulled aside and warned that she might get booed.
Ava told the story while appearing on Cody’s What Do You Wanna Talk About? podcast, and even she seemed to realize halfway through that she had never really talked about it publicly before. Cody had been explaining what went through his head when The Rock entered the WrestleMania picture and he thought the story he had spent a year trying to finish might suddenly be over.
“For a brief moment, I thought, ‘Hey, that’s it.’ Like, that was… we were gonna wait a full year and I’m not gonna get to, you know, finish that story. I’m not gonna get to… what do I do?”
Ava knew exactly what he meant. “It wasn’t what you wanted,” she told him, before Cody brought up the other part of that weekend — all the heat she was getting online. That opened the door for a story Ava hadn’t told before.
“I don’t think I’ve talked about this very much internally. I don’t think I’ve ever publicly talked about this.”
The Rock had returned on SmackDown that Friday and appeared to take Cody’s spot. Vengeance Day was Sunday, making it the first WWE show since everything blew up, and Ava was right there in the middle of it because she happened to be The Rock’s daughter. She still remembers sitting in makeup when NXT head writer Johnny Russo came over and asked to speak with her. His message was pretty simple: be ready for the crowd.
“He was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, when we play your promo, please don’t be surprised if they boo you.’ And I was like, ‘Okay. Like, yeah. Like, I can understand that.’”
They did, and the reaction wasn’t limited to the building, either. Ava said the hate online came with it, and that was the part of the story that stayed with her long after Vengeance Day was over.
“And then that did happen. Okay. All of the hate online happened. And that day it changed the way that I looked at, I think, fans overall.”
It got to the point where Ava wasn’t just looking differently at the people watching wrestling. Her feelings about the business itself changed.
“And it just changed the way that I looked at the wrestling business, and for a while I thought about it in a very negative way. ‘Cause it was quite negative at the time.”
Ava doesn’t feel that way about the experience anymore. Strange as it sounds considering what she was dealing with, she is now grateful it happened. It forced her to figure out why she was in wrestling for herself. Being The Rock’s daughter meant there were always going to be people judging her based on her father or something he had done, and this was about as clear an example as she could have gotten.
“It made me much more confident in what I was doing and why I was doing it. All these external factors can happen and everyone can have an opinion because of, like, who I am or something that my dad has done or blah, blah, blah. But I was like, I need to… it made me be a little bit selfish in my journey and what I was doing. But I think it was necessary.”
Ava initially apologized to Cody for going off on a tangent. Cody wasn’t complaining. This was exactly the kind of story he wanted from her, and Ava then stopped for a second and realized just how much she had never said publicly about that night.
“That Vengeance Day pay-per-view, like, it changed so much of how I thought about wrestling and my journey and my place in wrestling. Yeah. The whole thing.”
Cody remembered it being heavy. He also had more involvement in Ava’s side of the story than anyone knew at the time. While fans were chanting his name and going after The Rock’s daughter online, Cody reached out to her privately.
“And you reached out to me that day, and I’ll never forget that.”
Cody had to think about it for a second and jokingly asked Ava whether he had been nice. She remembered exactly what he said.
“No, you were very kind. You asked me if I was okay, and then you asked if there was anything you could do.”
Cody was watching the same thing explode from the completely opposite side. “We Want Cody” was suddenly bigger than the normal wrestling trend, and having that many fans behind him obviously meant something. The problem was that he was still processing what had happened a few days earlier.
“That was a nice feeling, but it wasn’t… it was a… it had hit so hard a few days before that I wasn’t there to receive it in any way.”
Ava wasn’t interested in fighting with anybody online while it was happening. She saw the reaction but decided that responding would only put more attention on it.
“I didn’t wanna signal boost it, and I didn’t want… I just didn’t wanna touch it.”
There wasn’t much getting away from it once Vengeance Day started anyway. Ava remembered NXT putting up a post about Oba Femi after all the buildup surrounding his match, only for the comments to have almost nothing to do with Oba. Cody knew exactly what she was talking about. The whole show had basically been swallowed by the conversation around him and The Rock.
“And it was for the whole duration of the show. Every match that was on that show that night… all of it was just…”
More than two years later, Ava can finally say she’s grateful she went through it. At the time, though, she was getting booed while the man fans were fighting for was privately checking to make sure she was okay.
What do you think of Ava getting caught in the middle of the “We Want Cody” backlash despite having nothing to do with the decision? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
