Cody Rhodes Reflects on Losing to Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39
- Cody Rhodes suffered a controversial defeat to Reigns at last year’s WrestleMania.
- The American Nightmare has revealed how he dealt with the loss amid much expectation he would become champion.
- Rhodes will headline both nights of WrestleMania 40.
WrestleMania 39 was supposed to be the crowing moment in the career of Cody Rhodes. Over 67,000 people filed into SoFi Stadium with the expectation that Roman Reigns would lose his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship and The Bloodline would crumble.
On night one of the Premium Live Event, the first step in that theory became reality as The Usos lost the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Championships to Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, but the masses were stunned into silence when Reigns pinned Rhodes 24 hours later to extend his long run with the title.
Cody recently sat down with Ariel Helwani on the MMA Hour to discuss his upcoming rematch with Reigns at WrestleMania 40 – and also spoke about his controversial loss to The Tribal Chief at last year’s event.
Cody Rhodes Reflects on Being Pinned by Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39
The American Nightmare failed to fulfil his destiny last year
Since the defeat, the two-time Royal Rumble match winner has been on a tear to earn his way back to challenging Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship once more. But, despite WrestleMania 39 potentially acting as a catalyst for this year’s Show of Shows, most fans will still endlessly debate over whether or not Rhodes’ loss in 2023 was truly the right call, particularly given how ready the WWE Universe seemed to be to embrace the 38-year-old as the champion.
To attempt to gain some clarity on the circumstances surrounding his loss, Helwani quizzed Cody about the match, asking how far in advance the challenger learned that he was set to lose in the main event. Not wanting to pull the curtain back too much, Rhodes had a perfect response.
“It’s a great question, and there’s a movie ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’, there’s a quote in there that I keep getting wrong: ‘when the fact becomes legend, print the legend’. For the purpose of this answer and that question, what I’ll tell you is that I found out in the ring, in the moment that he hit me with the spear and pinned me one-two-three, that’s when I found out.”
Understandably, Ariel then pushed Cody on his answer, saying there would surely have had to have been a conversation beforehand regarding the finish of the match. On this, Cody simply replied “I would say not surely, but I can’t go further on that question. I tried,” keen to keep the inner workings of the business under wraps.
Helwani then asked Rhodes what his reaction to not becoming champion had been in the days following the match. Cody recalled a conversation with John Cena that had really helped him get some perspective on the situation. Per ProWrestling.net, the 16-time world titleholder challenged him to be a champion without the belt, encouraging Rhodes to look at other measures of success such as ticket sales and merchandise revenue.
“I truly did look at it from the perspective of I wanted to be the quarterback, I wanted to have the ball. I didn’t get the ball, so what do you do in that scenario? Kind of go back to my old ways, which is, and this is gonna sound crude, but make them pay. Make them understand that that’s not the way, that the way should’ve been this but it really intersected and worked in conjunction with what John told me [about being a champion without the belt].”
“I truly did look at it from the perspective of I wanted to be the quarterback, I wanted to have the ball. I didn’t get the ball, so what do you do in that scenario? Kind of go back to my old ways, which is, and this is gonna sound crude, but make them pay. Make them understand that that’s not the way, that the way should’ve been this but it really intersected and worked in conjunction with what John told me [about being a champion without the belt].”
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