Through all of Cody Rhodes’ generally vague statements about his 2022 AEW exit, I’ve personally always believed his issues were primarily with Tony Khan. It just always struck me that when the company launched in 2019, Rhodes very much seemed to be the face of the business. But as it became more successful, owner & president Khan seemed to step into the spotlight more and more. A clash of egos between two people that AEW wouldn’t exist without didn’t seem surprising to me. In fact, it’s a scenario
we’ve seen play out time and again, in pretty much every field imaginable.
Rhodes seems to confirm that theory in his pre-SummerSlam visit to The Bill Simmons Podcast (the full thing, not the juicy teaser clip they dropped Wednesday night to promote the episode). As you might expect in a conversation between two “sports guys”, they do so using an NFL analogy.
During the interview, Simmons says that what happened to Cody at AEW “coincidentally reminded” him of the falling out between Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the head coach who won back-to-back Super Bowls for the team in the early 1990s, Jimmy Johnson. Jones & Johnson didn’t launch the Cowboys, but the franchise reached the pinnacle after Jerry bought the team and hired his old college pal Jimmy to build it and run it. Once the coach took “Dem Cowboys” to the mountaintop, the owner wanted the bulk of the credit. Johnson resigned weeks after winning his second Lombardi Trophy.
Cody’s response to the analogy?
“I feel like probably similar.”
He then seems to start talking about that situation before focusing on how well things have worked out for him since, and how that makes him grateful for the ending at AEW — even though it was “terrible”.
“If it hurts even more when you’re tasked to do something when somebody sees it with their own eyes, but then, I don’t look at any of it — I said I was angry and enraged, I don’t look at it with any negativity, and here is why:
“I got to be part of WWE again... and I got to be part of WWE, we’re talking about [Steve] Austin and [Hulk] Hogan, two of the greatest to ever lace up their boots, and every one of those [gate] records have been broken. I got to be in the matches that broke those records. I got to stand across from Roman Reigns at [WrestleMania] 39, I got to do it again — I got the quarterback spot at a company where I was last in the combine.
“I am very grateful. That’s why I have trouble articulating it and why I want to write this book... I’m very grateful for, ‘Hey, this schism happened, but the outcome is I got to be with the biggest game in town. And not only did I get this spot, I got to show them that I could do it...”
Simmons then offers to sum it up for Rhodes by saying, “Good career move”. The man who will main event SummerSlam on Sunday night agrees.
Do you agree this indicates a lot of Cody’s issues at AEW were with TK? Or is that confirmation bias on my part? Let us know what you think, and check out Rhodes’ entire episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast here.
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