Normally we’d chalk it up to the fact we’re a pro wrestling blog: if a pro wrestler is in a mainstream movie, our coverage of the movie focuses on the pro wrestler as much or more than the movie itself.
But in the case of the Street Fighter reboot, there’s another WrestleMania main eventer and a New Japan star in the cast along with the pro wrestler whose been at the center of a significant majority of our Street Fighter coverage. The percentage may not be as high everywhere on the wrestle web*, but
I’d still bet the majority of Street Fighter #content from pro wrestling outlets across the digital world focused on Cody Rhodes more than Roman Reigns or Hirooki Goto.
Some of that is down to accessibility. Rhodes has basically been a marketing point man for himself and AEW or WWE non-stop for the past decade, so it’s not surprising he did more media throughout Street Fighter production or that he mentioned the film every chance he got.
But he’s also been given for some great attention-grabbing efforts, and hasn’t hesitated to have fun with them.
But Cody didn’t just standout when he was wearing an expensive collectible popcorn bucket in the shape of his character Giule’s hair. He stood out in our earliest looks at the film, too:
One of Rhodes’ non-wrestler co-stars backs us up on this. While Cody was on the latest episode of Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant podcast, the comedian who plays Dan Hibiki in Street Fighter revealed that producers added Guile to more scenes in the film because the American Nightmare was so good as Guile:
“I thought that you knew your character — and I don’t want to compare with anybody, but I thought you knew that character as well as I’ve ever seen anybody that I’ve acted with know their character…To the point where you would just kind of be on set with the hair, whenever you had the hair on you were kind of in character. We could also talk shit about wrestling, or our family, or whatever, but you might just mutter shit in character, and then it would work, and then it would be in the movie!
“I think with you, I think your time in the movie doubled since you arrived… like they added scenes for him, popped him in other shit, like…”
Rhodes doesn’t deny it, but humbly says he was “very blessed” to stay for an extra week of shooting, and began to say deliver a Cody-esque promo about his additional scenes coming about because “the movie was a living breathing organism” when Schulz cut him off:
“Let me brag for you: You killed it, and they were like, ‘How do we put him in more things?’”
Rhodes was very funny in a small role in the latest Naked Gun flick, and it sounds like that may not have been a one-off. Could Cody follow in John Cena’s footsteps faster than we thought? He’s said that WWE contract he just signed allows for time away from the ring to work on outside projects… do you think Cody’s going to have a lot of those, or are we overreacting to a few clips and friendly interview?
Sound off below.
* Cody’s deadpan smart-ass take on Guile is tailor-made to pop Cagesiders on both sides of these screens.
