Cody Rhodes is tired of people assuming his work ethic comes from being Dusty Rhodes’ son. The WWE star says he’s spent years hearing about the massive shadow his father left behind, but the person who actually deserves credit for teaching him to work hard is his mother.
Speaking during HeymanHustleTV Presents: The Roundtable, Cody discussed growing up as the child of a wrestling legend alongside Charlotte Flair, Jacob Heyman and O’Shea Jackson Jr. That’s when he pushed back on the idea that he’s constantly working because he feels some responsibility to live up to Dusty’s legacy.
“I’m not working hard because Dusty Rhodes told me to work hard. And I’m not even working hard — it’s unrelated to him now. It’s put out there as like, ‘Oh, you got that big, you know, you got the boots to fill, the shadow,’ like all that.”
Cody has heard the same argument applied to plenty of second-generation stars. Whether it’s Dusty’s son, Ric Flair’s daughter, Ice Cube’s son or Paul Heyman’s son, Cody says outsiders automatically assume they need to work harder simply because of the family name attached to them.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, you know, you’re Dusty’s kid. You know, you’re Cube’s kid. You know, you’re Ric’s kid. You got — you know, you’re Paul’s kid. You got to do more than everybody else.’ Fuck, I was already going to do more than everybody else.”
That’s also where Cody believes his mother doesn’t receive nearly enough recognition. While Dusty’s influence on his wrestling career is obvious, Cody says his actual work ethic came from a completely different place.
“My work ethic doesn’t come from my father. It comes from my mom. She don’t get no credit.”
Cody also made it clear that Dusty himself wasn’t the person putting all that pressure on him. According to Cody, his father never sat him down and demanded that he surpass what he had accomplished in wrestling.
“My dad never told me that. People on the outside told me that, you know. I was never told to like, ‘All right, you got to, you know, top me,’ or like, ‘You got to be better than this.’”
Instead, Cody says that pressure came from fans, comments and articles constantly framing his career around whether he could live up to Dusty. Hearing that narrative over and over eventually created a pretty complicated feeling toward something that should have been one of the biggest blessings of his life.
“But if you look in comments and, you know, articles or anything, that’s all it’s filled with. And so you’ll start to kind of have a resentment for one of the greatest gifts you could ever have.”
Cody isn’t distancing himself from Dusty’s legacy, but he clearly wants people to separate that legacy from his own drive to succeed. For him, constantly turning everything he accomplishes into another comparison with his father can eventually make an incredible family connection feel more like a burden.
What do you think about Cody Rhodes saying outsiders created the pressure for him to live up to Dusty Rhodes rather than Dusty himself? Let us know in the comments below.
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.
