Cody Rhodes has spent years walking around with one of the most recognizable tattoos in wrestling. Turns out, if he could do it all over again, the American Nightmare logo probably wouldn’t be sitting on his neck.
While speaking with Santino Marella on What Do You Wanna Talk About?, Cody admitted that he still loves the actual artwork and has nothing but respect for the artist. The decision to put it on his neck, however, is another story.
“I stand by the fact that I think the work is great and the artist is great, but I also will reveal, as I think I’ve revealed on this pod before—the neck tattoo, I would widely consider the greatest regret of my life. I’ll live with it. I am not gonna—I ain’t trying to get it removed. No, we’re gonna rock this till the very end.”
The problem wasn’t tattoos themselves. Cody actually considers his “Dream” tattoo his favorite. What got him was the sheer size of the American Nightmare logo once he finally saw the finished product. Cody thought he was getting something considerably smaller. Then he looked in the mirror and saw it reaching into his jaw.
“What I thought was, it was like here and it was like this. And then when I saw it and it was in my jaw and it was so big, my life changed. Looking in a mirror.”
And if Dusty Rhodes were somehow around to see what his son had done, Cody has a pretty good idea how that conversation would go.
“If my dad was to come back to life, he would not say congrats. He would not say—he would lose his s***. ‘You’ve ruined yourself.’ Like, like this is—”
The funny part is that the tattoo Cody regrets has also become inseparable from Cody Rhodes. The American Nightmare logo is everywhere now, and Cody knows having something that instantly recognizable permanently stamped onto his neck hasn’t exactly been terrible for business. That’s why even he struggles to completely hate it.
“Yeah, I’d say it’s the greatest regret of my life, but it also is—it’s proved, uh, it’s had some very beneficial elements of it. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s complicated. Best way to put it, my relationship with my tattoo.”
Cody regrets it. Dusty apparently would’ve hated it. And that first look in the mirror changed his life. But six years after putting the American Nightmare on his neck, it’s become so unmistakably Cody that removing it now would almost look stranger than getting it did in the first place.
Do you think Cody Rhodes’ neck tattoo ultimately helped make the American Nightmare look more iconic, or was getting it there a mistake? Let us know in the comments.
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