WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon reportedly has big plans for Cody Rhodes’ WWE return.
As noted, it was announced on Tuesday morning that Cody and Brandi Rhodes have left AEW. You can click here for the original statements from Rhodes and AEW President Tony Khan. You can also click here and click here for the initial reports on Rhodes possibly returning to WWE, along with more on his AEW departure. You can click here for what Dustin Rhodes had to say about the departures, and click here for an update on the WWE return talks. You can also click here for the latest on Cody’s talks with Khan.
In an update, Wade Keller of PWTorch noted that Vince sees Cody’s AEW departure as a big deal, and wants to treat it as such.
“Cody and WWE haven’t confirmed it but Cody is going to WWE and he’s going to get a big push,” Keller said. “Vince McMahon is going to treat this as a big deal. Everybody I talked to thinks Vince loves the idea of acquiring a co-founder and EVP and, you know, main event wrestler. He just held their secondary singles title not that long ago, and having him show up on WWE TV is something that Vince is very interested in taking advantage of and making money on it. It could even be a situation where Cody is in a major match at WrestleMania.”
Keller noted that after several hours of conversations with WWE and AEW sources, he believes Rhodes has a good shot at making it onto the WrestleMania 38 card. He also believes Rhodes will receive a big push to start off his WWE return run.
“I fully expect Cody to be on WrestleMania either as a wrestler or making his first appearance,” Keller said. “I don’t know if they can hold back on putting him on TV so I could even see him appearing on Raw or SmackDown next week. I’m not aware of there being any kind of non-compete at this point since he’s been a free agent for a while so Cody could appear. I wouldn’t be shocked if there’s even some augmentation to the booking plans for WrestleMania perhaps related to the Elimination Chamber in order to set the stage for Cody to do something really big at WrestleMania.”
Keller continued, “I think Cody will get a big push, at least at first. You know, there’s different opinions on whether Vince is going to resent Cody for creating competition or admire Cody for his entrepreneurial spirit and being classy about it the whole way. You know, Paul Heyman, Eric Bischoff, Jeff Jarrett, they all competed with Vince [and] they all got jobs again. So, you know, we’ll, we’ll see how it goes. Vince saw Cody as a mid-carder. He saw Christian as a mid-carder. Christian went to Impact Wrestling and won a world title…He came back, he got a better push, but it wasn’t at the level of Edge, which is what, you know, Christian always wanted. He wanted to be at the Edge level.”
There is still no confirmation that Rhodes has signed with WWE yet, but we will keep you updated.
Stay tuned for more.
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