Cody Rhodes continues to make the media rounds heading into the first WWE premium live event of the year this evening, as WWE Royal Rumble 2025 goes down tonight at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
During a recent interview with TheOneMona ahead of tonight’s big event, “The American Nightmare” spoke about where he stands with “The Final Boss” Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, as well as possibilities for himself for “The Last Time Is Now” WWE Retirement Tour of John Cena.
Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On where he stands with The Rock: “I tell people always when it comes to The Rock and The Final Boss, I think personally that I feel he either sees something special in me and as the head of the board and as him and Nick Khan and Triple H leading us into this next generation, he sees something and wants to push me to go for it. That’s more from a behind-the-scenes perspective, but I also wonder in my own mind sometimes just kind of laying there looking up thinking maybe he hates me, absolutely hates me, and is planning some devious way to get back at me for the things that took place at WrestleMania 40, which he shouldn’t. I mean, the night before I won it all, he actually has a win over me. But I can tell you that I know people don’t love when the curtain gets pulled back too much. Really, really unique outside the box thinker and for a guy who’s been on every movie set, he’s been around the A list. He is A list. He’s walked into every room. I can look in someone’s eyes and know when they have the fever for wrestling when they’re a wrestler.I think we might hate each other, but we’re both wrestlers and I think that’s what the connection is about, it’s the idea that he knows if he puts me in a Macon, Georgia at a live event or somewhere around the country and I’m representing this company, which is also his company, that I won’t leave anybody hanging that I, that I will do my damnedest to deliver. So, yeah, but all that to say, I don’t know where we stand again. The dude could run up on me right now and pop me in the ear and we’d be right back in it, but I don’t know where we stand now. It’ll always be in question, but he’s certainly been helpful to me as champion.”
On possibilities for himself for John Cena’s “The Last Time Is Now” WWE retirement tour: “One thing that’s been on my mind, I think when he announced he was retiring, is a lot of guys jumped to the line of, I want to wrestle John. A lot of guys jumped to the, ‘I want to do something with John.’ I’m probably the one who didn’t hold his hand up and that’s simply because John is everything to me and and there’s been so many guys I’m a product of who i took a little something from. The most that I’ve taken from anybody ever would be from John, and that was from driving those few years of them seeing how he did his interactions with fans, how he would do main events, to see how he did the quarterback , the leader all those things. So when i hear this is it, It’s still not fully for me. I don’t love this is it and I know it is. I know he means it when he says it. But I want to watch like a fan. I almost dread the idea of what that would look like. Because when you’re up against John now, you’re tasked to beat John Cena in his final run and that’s why I’m not raising my hand to be in that spot.”
(H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.)
