Cody Rhodes has already thought about what would change if WWE finally turned him heel, and one part of his plan would be pretty drastic. After explaining himself to the audience exactly once, Cody says he’d essentially stop talking altogether.
Speaking on The Ebro Laura Rosenberg Show, Cody was asked about the heel turn fans have been fantasy booking for years. He remains open to making that change, but revealed that his version would involve completely abandoning one of the biggest parts of his current character — cutting promos.
“I’m very open to it and I want that to be said. And I think the only little insight I could give is if that happened, I would tell the audience one time and one time only why it happened.
And they’ll never hear from me again. There wouldn’t be a single promo ever cut for me. Somebody else would cut those promos.”
Cody already has an idea of what that one explanation could sound like. He admitted there are frustrations buried underneath the surface, including feeling like wrestling fans hold him to an almost impossible standard where doing something for them only creates another expectation.
“I’d give them one moment because if there was ever a case to go, ‘All right, guys, here’s the problem.’ Wrestling fans do like to hold me to the highest damn standard possible and I cannot complain about it.
But if I do something nice for them, right? If I do something, if I was to move a mountain for them, their response isn’t going to be, ‘Thank you. Appreciate that.’ Their response is, ‘Well, you could have moved that other mountain.’
You know, it’s like, ‘Of course you move the mountain.’ So I think if they think about my history in totality with everything with wrestling, there might be a couple things loaded up maybe down in the basement in here that didn’t feel good that I had to eat and walk through.”
However, Cody doesn’t necessarily believe those frustrations are enough to make the turn happen. For everything that hasn’t gone his way, he also recognizes that wrestling has ultimately given him just about everything he could have wanted.
“And I would say it one time and one time only. The reason that I don’t think that’s going to happen is because in addition to resentments and all that, I’ve also been given everything you could possibly be given.
I am living the golden life as far as what I’ve got. So I try not to focus on what I didn’t get or what went wrong and what I actually got.”
There’s another catch for anyone expecting heel Cody to simply be the same American Nightmare with darker clothes and a little more attitude. Cody specifically warned that he wouldn’t be interested in becoming the kind of villain fans end up thinking is cooler than the babyface.
“But there’s a difference between being booed and really, really disliked. And I just worry that people might, and maybe this is you, might think that that change of paint would be new.
It would be fresh. Yeah. And it wouldn’t be actually bad. It would be cool. If I was to make this definitive turn, I’m just kind of letting you know, it wouldn’t be cool.
It wouldn’t be something that’s like, ‘Oh man, I’m now into him more as a babyface.’ No, it would be genuinely — I would do my best to take it very far.”
He doubled down on that point when Rosenberg asked whether he was essentially refusing to become a “cool heel.” Cody doesn’t know exactly what a bad guy is supposed to look like to modern wrestling fans, but he knows simply changing his presentation isn’t what he has in mind.
“I don’t want to speak absolutes, but I will tell you it’s not, ‘I’m the cool guy now. I wear shades, I’m a bad guy and new music.’ It’s not that.
I would not want to be rooted for. I don’t know what a bad guy is supposed to be anymore. We’re living in a different time.”
Cody has previously said he’s open to turning heel if it’s ultimately what’s best for WWE, and he has even discussed how someone such as Paul Heyman could potentially fit into that equation. His latest comments provide a much clearer picture of how dramatically he would want the character to change if WWE ever actually pulls the trigger.
For someone whose microphone work has been such a huge part of his WWE run, refusing to cut promos might be the biggest character change Cody could make without changing anything about his appearance. Fans asking for heel Cody may eventually get their wish — but apparently they’d only get to hear his side of the story once.
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.
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