Cody Rhodes once again opens up about his monumental loss to Roman Reigns in the main event of this year’s WrestleMania 39.
The American Nightmare spoke on this topic during a recent interview with the SI Media podcast, where he reflected on the deflating feeling he had after Reigns pinned him and admits that it’s a moment he is still stuck in.
I feel you have moments in your career where you get stuck in them, whether they’re so good or whether they’re so low, that you get stuck in these moments. It’s not unlike if you have a traumatic experience in your personal life. For me, I felt, and I still do three months removed, very stuck. In that there was a very long period of time where I was sitting in the ring. I knew I was sitting in the ring and knew I had lost. I’m watching people not leave. They’re looking at me. They’re looking at me and they’re either frustrated, they’re sad for me, they’re mad at me. But you usually see at the end of the night some people heading for the aisles. They’re going to beat traffic, something. We were just stuck. And I knew we were filming me. And the internal monologue I had when I saw my family at ringside, then I saw some of the most diehard fans fully decked out in every piece of merch for me they could have possibly bought, the internal monologue was really just telling myself to get up. And then I wanted to make a point that I was not going to walk what we call ‘loser lane.’ I’m going to walk all the way back up this 70-yard ramp and I want to feel every bit of this loss.
Cody remembers several friends and colleagues telling him that he should be happy to have just headlined WrestleMania, a mindset that Cody admits pissed him off.
And I had to mentally prepare for the amount of, ‘Oh my gosh, but you main evented WrestleMania.’ ‘Oh dude, you main evented WrestleMania.’ I kept hearing, ‘You already won.’ And even some of my close friends, I wanted to just jab right in the jaw. Like, no. All I found out from main eventing a WrestleMania is I want to do it again and I have to win. Like it’s a sickness, you know? Like, you got this high and for it to go like that — I can’t accept it. I can’t allow it.
The online reaction to Cody losing was very visceral, enough so that WWE told Cody to avoid going online shortly after the match.
I was surprised at how pissed people were. And I was surprised that a lot of managerial people in the company reached out to me, checking on me, and also reached out to me to let me know like, ‘Don’t go online. Don’t go online.’ And I didn’t even think to go. It’s such an incredibly busy week, there are so many emotions in that experience, I got my family with me at the time, I lost in front of them, which is another level of embarrassment. I didn’t even think to go online. Just the fact that they were preparing me and like battening down the hatches for, ‘This is shaky, people are really frustrated.’ That surprised me. That surprised me a lot.
In a separate interview, Cody spoke about his relationship with Arn Anderson and how he wishes he could have him back in his corner in WWE. You can read about that here.
(H/T and transcribed by F4WOnline)