Former WWE Champion Cody Rhodes appeared on LIVE with Kelly & Mark this week to promote WrestleMania 42. During the course of his chat with hosts Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, Cody explained what insider terms “babyface” and “heel” mean in pro wrestling. While doing so, he sounded like a wrestler who will try to avoid turning heel for as long as possible.
Mark: “You dealt with a little bit of interference in your last big match, yeah?”
Cody: “Yeah, everybody runs in on my matches. It’s the bane of
my existence as a good guy wrestler…”
Kelly: “Right, so you are definitively a good guy?”
Cody: “What we would call, and this is not my term, a babyface.”
Mark: “Babyface? And bad guys are the heels?”
Cody: “Bad guys are the heels, and then there’s the babyfaces. Yeah.”
Kelly: You are a babyface! Come on, look at that face! [laughs]
Cody: “For a long time there were a lot of anti-heroes…and just recently it felt like WWE hit this stride with so much youth in the audience, that it felt like babyfaces came back to life. Jey Uso, for example, is somebody that the kids go crazy for. Sami Zayn is out there doing it. For me to be able to be in that spot, I don’t want to leave it. It’s so much fun.”
Mark: “[Being a] good role model. I wouldn’t doubt that having two kids of your own now, you see how important that is for you.”
Cody: “It changes everything. I got real curmudgeon all of a sudden. Amongst my friends even, I don’t like cursing before noon, which is a weird thing.”
Kelly: “Uh oh…well good luck here, that’s all I got to say! You may hear some words backstage that you find very upsetting.”
Cody’s overwhelming desire to remain a babyface contributed to his downfall in AEW, where he remained a good guy in kayfabe well after fans turned on him. He also reportedly refused to turn heel last year in WWE even though someone as powerful as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wanted it to happen.
The kind of negative audience reaction that plagued Cody in AEW has yet to become the norm for him in WWE, but we do at least see more glimpses of it now than we did a year ago. The latest rumors indicate that WWE isn’t giving serious consideration to a possible Rhodes heel turn right now, at least in part because of his impressive merchandise sales as one of the most popular stars on the roster.
Do you think Cody Rhodes will ever turn heel again in WWE? If so, in what year will it finally happen? Give me your best guesses in the comments below, Cagesiders.
