Cody Rhodes Says Kayfabe Isn’t Dead — It’s Just “Different” in the Netflix ‘Unreal’ Era

Cody Rhodes isn’t sweating the idea that Netflix’s WWE: Unreal might “expose” too much of the wrestling business. In fact, he thinks it opens the door for even more creative storytelling.

Speaking with Bill Simmons, Rhodes said the notion that kayfabe is gone is outdated. In his view, wrestlers can still protect the magic — they just have to adapt to a new landscape.

“I think one of the things that presents itself for wrestlers that hardcore fans may not be thinking but the really smart smart super geniuses as I call them—you know, your Michael Hayes and your Mr. Hmons—there’s work that can happen within the work. If you say, ‘Hey, this is all real. This is look at this,’ then it starts to become hard to figure out, wait, how… no, that part’s real. And that’s where you can do work within the work. So, you can still… you can still do kayfabe. You really can. It’s just different. And that’s the fun experiment we get to take as we lift this veil, but we cover this thing up. I don’t know.”

Rhodes added that the fear of Unreal “showing too much” is misplaced. For him, it’s less about revealing secrets and more about shifting the way those secrets are used to tell stories.

“I just think it presents options that wrestlers and maybe the hardcore fans who are a little worried about, ‘Oh no, they’re going to expose it all’… yeah, maybe we expose this part, but maybe there’s a whole other part you didn’t see.”

Rhodes’ take reinforces the idea that modern pro wrestling doesn’t have to cling to the past to protect its mystique — it just needs to find smarter ways to blur the lines.

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