During the post-WWE Backlash: France press conference, Cody Rhodes commented on his very brief conversation with his brother Dustin following WrestleMania 40, whether he believes Dustin should be in the WWE Hall of Fame, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the post-show media scrum below:
On who he would like to face next: “That is a really great question. It’s almost a better question for Triple H in terms of the matchmaker, the person who is putting on these international PLEs. Clearly you can see the effort is being made to…we’re not resting on our laurels in the sense of ‘oh business is the hottest it’s been in the last two years.’ The intention is that next year when we’re at Backlash again, it’s even bigger. It’s even better. That would truly be amazing. Not to skate away from your question…there’s so many. I feel I’ve only scratched the surface perhaps with AJ Styles. I don’t know if we’ll revisit that. That’s a type of fight I’d love to get into one more time. And he left a little ding on my shoulder that perhaps I’d like to return the favor. There’s a lot of folks. I’ll tell you one that’s maybe a little strange. I could name everybody but LA Knight is somebody that I look at because, I get it, ‘oh they’re two good guys.’ I understand that. There is a flavor there. There is something about it. When you have that fever, you gotta know. You want to know. ‘I’m the man.’ ‘No, I’m the man.’ All that macho toxic alpha stuff that I still have a bit of, I suppose. There’s so many and there’s probably new faces that we don’t even know. And I’m not gonna say his name, he had a birthday the other day, but he returned a gift to me that I did not appreciate and when that man returns I’d like to take something from him as well.”
On if he spoke to Dustin Rhodes after his WrestleMania 40 win: “Asking about my brother Dustin, Goldust…we call him Chicken. There’s a second part of that name that’s inappropriate but we’ll just say Chicken for now. Sometimes what you see on screen, what we do, it’s really hard, the suspension of disbelief. So much of what’s happening to me on screen is real. It’s happening. It’s real. And the most I ever got to be…because Dustin and I have a big age gap and different moms…the most we ever got to be brother-brothers, was when we were tagging with each other, when we fought against each other. And they were such special moments. They were tumultuous and tense. I got to find out that brothers hug and fight as well. I like to hold onto those. I don’t want to taint those but you asked if we had that conversation. We had the shortest conversation ever at Wrestlemania and it might have been the most important one I had. Because I know I’m hard on him but he’s my brother. Before I had a Sting as a favorite wrestler or Shawn Michaels, ‘The Natural’ Dustin Rhodes was my favorite wrestler. He just said, ‘You’re doing it now.’ To hear that, that’s just the greatest validation ever, you know? You compete with your brother, you compete with your dad. You chase their legacies, and at the end of the day you kinda get to the point were you’re like, ‘I just want it all to be together’ in what we’ve done. I always rally for him to be a part of our Hall of Fame, I think he should. Love him very much.”
On being the face of the new era in WWE: “A wrestler will tell you, ‘I’m the face of the place, I’m the face of this new era. I’m the lead dog. I’m the quarterback.’ A wrestler will say all those things and say it with bravado and beat his chest. But how you know it’s true is when somebody else tells you. There are two people tonight who told me exactly what you just said in their own way. I won’t name names, but one of them said, ‘this is your spot.’ And that was the most important spot on the card, to take us home, to go last. And the other one, I will name his name, he’s been very helpful and that’s Jamie Noble. And Jamie Noble called me the golden boy tonight. I dreamed of that, sure. But I got hit in the mouth enough times, I fell down enough times, I looked up at the lights enough times to think maybe that won’t happen. So if that is the case and I am the face of all of this, I want to make sure that this new era and this run is remembered with as much excitement and love and happiness as it has brought me.”
During the post-WWE Backlash: France press conference, Cody Rhodes commented on his very brief conversation with his brother Dustin following WrestleMania 40, whether he believes Dustin should be in the WWE Hall of Fame, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the post-show media scrum below:
On who he would like to face next: “That is a really great question. It’s almost a better question for Triple H in terms of the matchmaker, the person who is putting on these international PLEs. Clearly you can see the effort is being made to…we’re not resting on our laurels in the sense of ‘oh business is the hottest it’s been in the last two years.’ The intention is that next year when we’re at Backlash again, it’s even bigger. It’s even better. That would truly be amazing. Not to skate away from your question…there’s so many. I feel I’ve only scratched the surface perhaps with AJ Styles. I don’t know if we’ll revisit that. That’s a type of fight I’d love to get into one more time. And he left a little ding on my shoulder that perhaps I’d like to return the favor. There’s a lot of folks. I’ll tell you one that’s maybe a little strange. I could name everybody but LA Knight is somebody that I look at because, I get it, ‘oh they’re two good guys.’ I understand that. There is a flavor there. There is something about it. When you have that fever, you gotta know. You want to know. ‘I’m the man.’ ‘No, I’m the man.’ All that macho toxic alpha stuff that I still have a bit of, I suppose. There’s so many and there’s probably new faces that we don’t even know. And I’m not gonna say his name, he had a birthday the other day, but he returned a gift to me that I did not appreciate and when that man returns I’d like to take something from him as well.”
On if he spoke to Dustin Rhodes after his WrestleMania 40 win: “Asking about my brother Dustin, Goldust…we call him Chicken. There’s a second part of that name that’s inappropriate but we’ll just say Chicken for now. Sometimes what you see on screen, what we do, it’s really hard, the suspension of disbelief. So much of what’s happening to me on screen is real. It’s happening. It’s real. And the most I ever got to be…because Dustin and I have a big age gap and different moms…the most we ever got to be brother-brothers, was when we were tagging with each other, when we fought against each other. And they were such special moments. They were tumultuous and tense. I got to find out that brothers hug and fight as well. I like to hold onto those. I don’t want to taint those but you asked if we had that conversation. We had the shortest conversation ever at Wrestlemania and it might have been the most important one I had. Because I know I’m hard on him but he’s my brother. Before I had a Sting as a favorite wrestler or Shawn Michaels, ‘The Natural’ Dustin Rhodes was my favorite wrestler. He just said, ‘You’re doing it now.’ To hear that, that’s just the greatest validation ever, you know? You compete with your brother, you compete with your dad. You chase their legacies, and at the end of the day you kinda get to the point were you’re like, ‘I just want it all to be together’ in what we’ve done. I always rally for him to be a part of our Hall of Fame, I think he should. Love him very much.”
On being the face of the new era in WWE: “A wrestler will tell you, ‘I’m the face of the place, I’m the face of this new era. I’m the lead dog. I’m the quarterback.’ A wrestler will say all those things and say it with bravado and beat his chest. But how you know it’s true is when somebody else tells you. There are two people tonight who told me exactly what you just said in their own way. I won’t name names, but one of them said, ‘this is your spot.’ And that was the most important spot on the card, to take us home, to go last. And the other one, I will name his name, he’s been very helpful and that