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[Bryan Danielson: I Love To Lie, Cody Rhodes Taught Me How Fun Lying Is](https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/bryan-danielson-i-love-lie-cody-rhodes-taught-me-how-fun-lying)
Edit: Btw I loved this spot.
Cody was never the biggest star, he was more like a core piece. Felt like he represented the company in a lot of ways - for example I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the position Cody was at the end of the Brodie Lee tribute show.
I get that creatively a lot of people couldn’t stand him, but he’s been missed more than anyone would admit
Nah, you could argue he was the face and quarterback of the company the first year but by the time this happened he was in his own little Codyverse and didn't really play a big role onscreen from week to week. I appreciate that he gave his all up until his last days with AEW (Sammy ladder match) but sadly he buried himself with boring feuds, inconsistent storylines, tone deaf promos and having Brandi with him, who, by the way, used way too much lighter fluid and almost burned her husband alive here.
>but sadly he buried himself with boring feuds, inconsistent storylines
This is literally everything people bitch about is wrong with AEW now. Especially with Bryan Danielson
I bitch about it too, but some people act like the product fell apart because Cody left but his character and storylines were a hot mess for most of last year and he was pretty much in full control of himself while it was happening. He was by no means the quarterback of AEW during that time period. Not on screen at least.
Matches were good. There isn't a single aew with a coherent storyline from start to finish. Aew has some really good matches but judging it as a TV show based on plot, it's been rough.
Finally a leveled and real reply to what he was to AEW.
This revisionist "OMG HE WAS THE GLUE THAT HELD AEW TOGETHER!1!" nonsense recently is BS.
And so fucking glad that his exit meant the end of Brandi Rhodes getting airtime!
I think she’s lovely. If she could find a way to transition how naturally charming she is IRL to tv I’d be down but she’s never really figured that out.
The company has fallen apart creatively, morale wise, & financially since he left so I think he may have had a far greater positive influence than you may think.
Financially? How on earth do you know that? The other two you could certainly argue, but what in earth would tell you financially? They’re selling out PPV events and announcing big sales of them via stream.
Ever since Cody left the ppv buys have consistently dropped. This isn’t just because of him of course but it’s part of a larger issue w the company (lack of direction, bloated roster not used optimally, etc.)
All Out ‘21: 215k
Full Gear ‘21: 155k
Revolution ‘22: 175k
DoR ‘22: 165k
FD ‘22: 140k
All Out ‘22: 140k
Full Gear ‘22: early indications are this will be very low buy as well; my guess is less than 140k
I understand some of the ‘gate numbers’ talk but isn’t that just increasing prices on a dwindling crowd? At present, I don’t think AEW is legitimately selling out medium/large arenas.
With an uncertain economy, I'm canceling Disney+. Spending PPV bucks for a wrestling show is a big ask. Especially when the highlights are on social media within minutes
You’re being dishonest with the way you’re framing those PPV buy numbers. You purposely start with All Out 2021 and leave out the 9 shows that preceded it, let’s see why:
Double or Nothing 19 - 98k
All Out 19 - 88k
Full Gear 19 - 75k
Revolution 20 - 90k
Double or Nothing 20 - 105k
All Out 20 - 90k
Full Gear 20 - 75k
Revolution 21 - 135k
Double or Nothing 21 - 115k
There was a fucking *massive* jump between Double or Nothing last year and All Out, almost certainly having something to do with the much anticipated return of one of the biggest pro wrestlers of the previous decade after a seven year absence. It wasn’t the norm, it was an exception. Of course following that it looks like the PPV buys are plunging, but it ignores the fact on a show by show basis, 2022 has been AEW’s best year as far as buy rates are concerned, and Cody didn’t wrestle on a single one of them. It also ignores that throughout the entire history of the company, there have been peaks and valleys with regard to PPV buys.
I'm gonna back you up here. The Codyverse became tedious, and his character was incoherent by the end, but the matches delivered and the show's quality overall has dipped in his absence.
It's a shame he didn't right the ship for his actual character before the end, but it wasn't nearly as bad as people acted at the time. There's much worse stuff on the show now than the frustration of his will he/won't he babyface to heel storyline.
Hell, that exact move has defined AEW since he left! MJF in the men's division, Hayter in the women's division. When will they turn one way or the other? *Will* they turn at all? Tune in next week to see the same story beat play out for the 50th time and wait even longer to find out!
If I remember right the stipulation was added out of the blue. Cody had been feuding with Malakai and Andrade had been feuding with PAC. With them switching round after the 4 way at Full Gear.
The stipulation seemed forced and fire spot with Brandi all felt unnecessary. Speculation being that it was done for Rhodes to the Top season 2.
One wrestling trope I can see die is the "Insert City Name Here" Street Fight/Brawl whatever.
That also includes city nicknames like The Beltway Beatdown or City of Brotherly Love Bashup or what have you.
But with out the Philly Street Fight we wouldn’t have gotten this [beauty.](https://twitter.com/starkmanjones/status/1446151881043161088?s=46&t=DxybrDZm2eQo5DGUSCMKpA)
If there's one thing that took me out of a match ever since I was a child it's brawls in the crowd.
I was still shitting my pants and even then I could tell that the guys were just pretend punching and taking long breaks instead of wrestling each other, plus that shit is only marginally cool if they come your way, the other 90% of the arena can't see shit and has to wait until the wrestlers feel like working again.
Honestly, that footage that could have been turned morphed into Rhodes to the Top Season 2 would be interesting to see.
I went to the last Chicago show where Brandi was heckled out of the arena during a promo with American Top Team. I’ve never heard go away heat like that in person.
It would interesting to see the backstage reaction at the Chicago and Atlanta shows.
I've never understood what they were going for there. Brandi came out and antagonized the crowd right away, saying the wrong city name and clearly heeling it up the entire time until Lambert came out to insult her repeatedly.
The only guess I ever had was that it was for a Rhodes to the Top story where Brandi was fed up with the crowds booing Cody
In reality, he was neither of those things by this point and this felt like a desperate attempt to get an audience who had turned on him to cheer for him again.
Agreed. This was in his home state too and he still didn't win over the crowd with these antics. I will forever be convinced that this was the day he seriously started considering going to WWE sooner rather than later.
He had to have known the jig was up the night he unveiled the tattoo and had that atrocious live performance of his entrance theme. That one night absolutely killed him dead. To his credit, Cody is clearly a lot smarter than we gave him credit for, we all thought he needed a heel turn to freshen up but I think he knew before any of us that he needed a much deeper rehab than that. He proved me, and a lot of us here, wrong. I thought his credibility was permanently damaged after that night.
That neck tattoo/Revolution thing is absolutely revisionist bullshit that this sub loves to spew as truth lol. He went on to have an acclaimed TNT championship reign that ended with him turning Darby into a star.
Crowds were still cheering him in the few post-Revolution shows before the pandemic. There were grumbles about him beating Archer in the TNT tournament final or him beating Brodie Lee in the dog collar match after baiting a heel turn, but the majority opinion at the time was that he was still a valuable part of Dynamite.
Fans turned on him after the atrocious Ogogo/QT Marshall feud and the strange decision to follow that up with a program with a debuting Malakai Black, just as AEW was getting back on the road for the first time in 18 months. No one was ever going to cheer for him or jeer Malakai.
I don't understand why people view Cody's success in WWE as a surprise. An AEW EVP jumping ship to WWE was automatically going to get over huge with the WWE crowd and Vince was smart enough to not bring Brandi in with him. As far as I'm concerned, Cody took the easy way out by signing with the guy that made him Stardust and then forbade him to use his kayfabe last name for years and started fresh after he buried his own character in AEW. Now, was Cody smart in the sense that he dodged the shitshow that AEW is right now? Yes. But he was always going to go over big in WWE by virtue of him being the first big name to jump ship the other way.
The crowd was wishy washy during the match, then Brandi got straight out booed when she revealed herself and then the crowd popped for the flame and 3 count but after that it was mostly polite applause. It was no where near the reaction you'd expect for a top name in his hometown.
I'm not saying the audience lost interest in Cody, but they obviously wanted him to be a heel. He got Cena ONS heat in Chicago around this time and was getting lots of boos everywhere.
Honestly it feels like about 3 years since Cody’s been in AEW, I genuinely can’t believe it was less than a year ago. All that being said this quote is honestly pretty ironic because it reminds of the story of him and Jericho making fun of CM Punk for claiming to be the locker room leader in WWE at the time, Cody was absolutely not the face or “quarterback” of AEW at this time, he hadn’t been since he basically took himself out of the world title scene.
By this point Jericho, Mox, Hangman, Kenny were all far ahead of him with newer guys like Punk, Danielson and even MJF beginning to truly ascend too.
Cody always seems to embellish or do a lot of revisionist history about his AEW run, especially the end. By the time he left he really wasn’t missed if we’re being honest but on the same note he truly could’ve been something special if he actually turned heel and went after the World Championship, especially with how everything’s turned out now.
I honestly think if Cody was the one to beat Hangman and go on a run instead of what happened with Punk and all that nonsense, we’d have had probably an all-time run as well as a true cementing of Cody as AEW’s face and made a mega-star out of him, relatively speaking.
Tony was never going to delay putting the title on Punk any longer (and he had the champions laid out til Hangman).
Cody might have been to blame for the stip that locked him out of the title picture, but it still wasn't going to happen for him in the present or not distant future. He was stuck, no matter what his character's face/heel/tweener alignment was.
You're probably correct that Tony was all hyped up to do a new "Summer of Punk" and wouldn't have delayed it for anything, but IMO Cody going full heel and going back on his word to challenge Hangman at DoN would have instantly made him the hottest act in the company and set up a crazy hot match between Cody and Punk at All Out with some hot TV defenses for Cody in between.
If nothing else having a legit heel champion to transition the title to Punk, even if they did it a month later on Dynamite rather than waiting for All Out, would have been better for both Punk and Hangman.
Christ yeah reading this that would have been so much better. Would have dramatically improved Punks "I'm gonna save the company" angle and would have soften the Hangman blow but the title going to a heel
Considering how things went south for the AEW title in the back half of the year; a first Cody reign instead of the **third** Mox run would have been a better option. Cody ultimately dropping the belt for MJF at Full Gear likely would have had a better storytelling and would have made an MJF loss a possible option.
The “tournament of champions” was missing a homegrown star of Cody’s caliber, despite Tony’s efforts of choosing the best of the best.
If Jericho and Moxley aren't considered "homegrown stars" in your estimation, than why is Cody? He was a prominent midcarder in WWE for nearly a decade. I know he increased his value after leaving, but it's odd to me that you'd consider him "homegrown."
Also weird to me that you'd say the tourney was missing a "homegrown star" when it literally featured Hangman Page, who is easily the best example of a "homegrown star" (besides MJF) that AEW has.
Lastly, I find AEW fans' obsession with "homegrown stars" to be baffling. I just want to see great wrestlers in compelling storylines. Imagine fans in 1984 being upset that Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper weren't "homegrown," or that the nWo weren't "homegrown" in 1996. So odd to me.
I meant it as a figure of speech…
As someone whom was with AEW on Day 1, Cody Rhodes winning the title would have made for better storytelling than Chris Jericho getting a second reign or Jon Moxley getting a third reign as champion in an ad-hoc emergency tournament.
What.
Cody Was the mainstream face of AEW. He kept doing appearances on tv shows, with Brandi. He was a judge on a contest show with his aew credentials being mentioned all the time. He had his own reality show too
He was out there constantly doing interviews
Yeah because Cody Rhodes likes to be the guy who glad hands people, he wants to be the John Cena. Clearly hes a better ambassador as punk burned his bridges. Cody was the face because he wanted that
Jericho wasn't doing any outreach. He was their biggest wrestling star but he was not the face of the company by any means. That was all Cody, LOGWATCHER is right.
Jericho was never the face of AEW, but he was the living Legend AEW needed to connect with a widest age range of fans possible.
Jericho was the only star to compete in 3 decades (90, 00, 10s) at a high level in different promotions with shifting gimmicks. Jericho even reinvented himself going to NJPW for a short run in that 17/18 range.
If AEW didn’t have Jericho on Day 1, I believe Tony would have pushed harder to have Punk on Day 1 or would have worked harder to poach another top WWE star.
I agree. Cody turning heel and beating Hangman would have been ideal and he would have had a great reign. The sad part is I believe a Punk meltdown was inevitable no matter what happened, and if Cody was still here he would have been the one to step up for the company and that would have flipped him right back to being the exact babyface hero he always wanted to be here.
Cody breaking his promise, turning heel, and beating Hangman is EXACTLY what should have happened.
He then feuds with Punk with the same talking points about Punk that he had in his final promo before the match against Sammy.
Would have been perfect.
It would have been Hangman loses to MJF and Cody comes full circle with the MJF story to beat him. Write that last part however you want, there's lots of routes, if booked well you could do face or heel and it would have been massive.
For me a big part of why Cody fell off toward the end was that there was no quality control with his angles. It very much seemed like Tony Khan gave him the go ahead to do more or less whatever he wanted.
I’d be very interested to see what a second run would be like, with a now (hopefully) more seasoned Tony Khan at the helm. Some of that Codyverse stuff should have never made it to TV.
It might have been good, it might have been bad, it might have been confusing, but Cody was rarely boring. You were going to likely see something you'd remember with him.
Which is AEW's biggest problem right now to me -- there's not much actually bad, but far too much is definitely boring.
They rely so heavily on trying to create "OMG" moments that none of them are actually "OMG" moments. It is barely a blip but remember when Jericho took the fall off of WarGames? Ya, most people don't either. But we sure do all remember Mick Foley off the top of Hell in a Cell. Why? Because not everyone was taking bumps from tops of cages back then, it was a rare site. Now we see Jericho, Guevara, the Bucks, Death Triangle, Omega and countless others do these "incredible" things that mean nothing because everyone else is doing them. Nothing means anything because they do everything all the time. The Attitude Era style of booking killed long term storytelling for the most part with the hot shotting and craziness. Except nothing seems crazy anymore.
I feel like he was one of the best parts of AEW until that match with Shaq and constantly leaving, returning, fake retirements and all that other stuff that was thrown in there. Then it all went south. He proved what he could do when he went to WWE looked like a superstar again and proved some people (me included) wrong. Didn't think it would play out like that tbh.
Brandi was presented on AEW TV as a heel since day one and her interfering in the match didn't help at all. Cody at the time of that clip was also booed and had short, confusing feuds with added stips that didn't make much sense. He should have gone full on Lex Luger, go for the World Title after his contract technically expired and where he would have signed a new one.
But I applaud him for always giving 100%
I don't know why this sticks in my mind so much but that time she rolled in the ring and sat in front of Malakai Black giving him the finger when he was trying to get his character over as a super scary demon-like figure really aggravated me. It was a totally unnecessary spot that took away from his character just so she could have a moment in the spotlight.
Well he couldn't really hit her, could he? What else was he going to do? Same with when she said she wanted to fight Dan Lambert. It was showing up guys and making them look weak, knowing they couldn't touch her, for no reason other than attempting to make herself look badass. I'm not saying that's not apart of wrestling because it's been done by valets for decades, but it's not a babyface valet thing to do. Babyfaces take bumps to get the heels over. Heels are the ones that threaten without repercussion until the last showdown. That hurt both Malakai and Cody's characters for absolutely no reason other than Brandi wanted to be on screen character.
Some fans were apparently only tuning in for the codyverse stuff and left when he left.
I've never seen one or heard from one but the numbers reflect that.
The whole idea of doing a weigh in was stupid so that's on Cody but if anyone should publicly apologize for that debacle it's Paul Wight for giving us all secondhand embarrassment.
This moment is when it all clicked for me. Cody wasn't the brilliant heel playing 4D chess, running a delusional face gimmick. He went through a flaming table to get cheered.
It's also when I went from being tired of him to actually liking him once again.
Dude really went through a flaming table on TV just for a pop.
i dont get it. i never saw him as the face of anything... He had a few cool matches i guess but all he has in my eyes is his name... Bullet Club/The Elite was the reason i was interested in aew
He’s not wrong, everytime he was on tv it felt special and had a strange aura when doing whatever he was doing, felt like a big deal with a big star and a big story going on, even if he was booed most of the time
Someday I want someone to admit that they realized that someone else's segments were better and more talked about and were the centerpiece of the show.
Cody was smart. If they don’t see you as a main eventer go to a smaller pond and become a main eventer and make New York want you back.
I thought he was corny and phony but he was a stabilizing figure. The second he left the company went to shit.
Notice how the whisper campaigns by Ty and the Jesus Twins conveniently leave him out when they retell the origins of AEW.
This guy is detached from reality if he thinks he was ever the face of AEW.
I mean even Tony Khan didn't care about having him at the start. He wanted Jericho, Kenny, the Bucks, and Punk. Jericho was the first face, then Kenny, Mox, and Punk traded it around a bit. Dude's delusional.
As a Cody in AEW Hater myself you are delusional if you think he wasn't over like rover and the active media / face of the revolution guy in 2019 into early 2020. AEW had tons of young upstart energy, something Jericho certainly didn't have.
It's the tattoo and downstrait thing that starts his decline. But before then, he was the face.
It's fucking bonkers to me that Cody and the Bucks never got a piece of equity in that company. They literally built it with those events. If Khan tried starting it from the ground up it never gets as a big. Those guys got fucked out of 10s of millions of dollars if not more if they renew and double their TV contract.
That is really the dumbest thing those guys have ever done. The company is named after them for gods sake. They just handed their golden goose to tony khan and may get like 1-2 mil max per year for it as long as they are with the company.
You could argue Cody was one of the faces of the company early on in AEW. The crowds were behind him and his stuff felt like a big deal. But by this point, the match with Andrade, he was not the face of the company or even close to it. Once he got lost in the Codyverse, that was it for him being one of the faces of the company.
Now I still think he could have pulled off a good heel run, which is what I think a lot of us were expecting, but it never happened. Now he’s in WWE and positioned as one of the top faces. Funny how a change of scenery can make such a big difference.
As someone who watched this epsiode with family, they were tuned to basketball instead. We flipped back at the end of the match and my dad saw Cody and said “that guy looks like hes been through hell” and that was it lol
The only period Cody was the biggest star was his MJF feud. (Also maybe Jericho was bigger)
He was a mega star when he did that cage match with Wardlow.
At the point he referenced AEW fans were sick of him (with good reason).
I mean, that spot is still mentioned in my household. Every time someone does something that looks like it could go real bad real quick, one of us says "...well, still wasn't as stupid as the burning table. Man, that was so damn stupid."
Not sure if that's how Cody wants it to be remembered, but that's how it is...
This is a little revisionist history from Cody. This match was pretty long after he was the 'quarterback'. His run had lost focus by then and gone off the rails. It was one of the things that showed he was trying to do something to get back on track.
I still have no idea what happened creatively with him in AEW. But when he says stuff like this I just think he viewed himself as the veteran megastar from day one, like later career Cena, while the fans were saying 'ok now we finally get to see Cody reach his potential'. I think he felt like his work in IMPACT, ROH, Japan, and the indies that led up to AEW, was equivalent to having a face of the company title run for a major TV company...and it just wasn't. Fans were still waiting for him to hit his prime, and he thought he already had done it all, and was looking to 'give back'.
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[Bryan Danielson: I Love To Lie, Cody Rhodes Taught Me How Fun Lying Is](https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/bryan-danielson-i-love-lie-cody-rhodes-taught-me-how-fun-lying) Edit: Btw I loved this spot.
"Woah, you′re only smoke and mirrors!"
Cody was never the biggest star, he was more like a core piece. Felt like he represented the company in a lot of ways - for example I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the position Cody was at the end of the Brodie Lee tribute show. I get that creatively a lot of people couldn’t stand him, but he’s been missed more than anyone would admit
Don’t think it’s a coincidence that AEW has gotten considerably worse since he left
Weird I feel the exact opposite. No codyverse has made AEW far more enjoyable for me.
It was simply replaced by the Jerichoverse.
The Jerichoverse existed then too.
You already forgot about his musical with MJF?
Nah, you could argue he was the face and quarterback of the company the first year but by the time this happened he was in his own little Codyverse and didn't really play a big role onscreen from week to week. I appreciate that he gave his all up until his last days with AEW (Sammy ladder match) but sadly he buried himself with boring feuds, inconsistent storylines, tone deaf promos and having Brandi with him, who, by the way, used way too much lighter fluid and almost burned her husband alive here.
>but sadly he buried himself with boring feuds, inconsistent storylines This is literally everything people bitch about is wrong with AEW now. Especially with Bryan Danielson
I bitch about it too, but some people act like the product fell apart because Cody left but his character and storylines were a hot mess for most of last year and he was pretty much in full control of himself while it was happening. He was by no means the quarterback of AEW during that time period. Not on screen at least.
If anything he’s the ball, fumbling around until he ends up in the hands of the other team.
People seem to hate scripting or hiring writers so this is what we get.
AEW went two years without either and the quality of the weekly shows was top notch for the most part
Matches were good. There isn't a single aew with a coherent storyline from start to finish. Aew has some really good matches but judging it as a TV show based on plot, it's been rough.
Finally a leveled and real reply to what he was to AEW. This revisionist "OMG HE WAS THE GLUE THAT HELD AEW TOGETHER!1!" nonsense recently is BS. And so fucking glad that his exit meant the end of Brandi Rhodes getting airtime!
>And so fucking glad that his exit meant the end of Brandi Rhodes getting airtime! Who the *hell* told you it was open mic night, bitch?
I like Brandy..
I think she’s lovely. If she could find a way to transition how naturally charming she is IRL to tv I’d be down but she’s never really figured that out.
Maybe he was a stronger presence than we realized in his backstage role, though? I dunno, all we can do is guess and gossip about this kind of thing.
YOU'RE JUST A POOR MAN'S VERSION OF SOME OTHER WRESTLING REDDIT'S POSTER!
The company has fallen apart creatively, morale wise, & financially since he left so I think he may have had a far greater positive influence than you may think.
Financially? How on earth do you know that? The other two you could certainly argue, but what in earth would tell you financially? They’re selling out PPV events and announcing big sales of them via stream.
Ever since Cody left the ppv buys have consistently dropped. This isn’t just because of him of course but it’s part of a larger issue w the company (lack of direction, bloated roster not used optimally, etc.) All Out ‘21: 215k Full Gear ‘21: 155k Revolution ‘22: 175k DoR ‘22: 165k FD ‘22: 140k All Out ‘22: 140k Full Gear ‘22: early indications are this will be very low buy as well; my guess is less than 140k I understand some of the ‘gate numbers’ talk but isn’t that just increasing prices on a dwindling crowd? At present, I don’t think AEW is legitimately selling out medium/large arenas.
With an uncertain economy, I'm canceling Disney+. Spending PPV bucks for a wrestling show is a big ask. Especially when the highlights are on social media within minutes
They sold ~1,500 more tickets for Full Gear ‘22 over ‘21. All out was the same sell out as last year (same building; no room to expand.)
You’re being dishonest with the way you’re framing those PPV buy numbers. You purposely start with All Out 2021 and leave out the 9 shows that preceded it, let’s see why: Double or Nothing 19 - 98k All Out 19 - 88k Full Gear 19 - 75k Revolution 20 - 90k Double or Nothing 20 - 105k All Out 20 - 90k Full Gear 20 - 75k Revolution 21 - 135k Double or Nothing 21 - 115k There was a fucking *massive* jump between Double or Nothing last year and All Out, almost certainly having something to do with the much anticipated return of one of the biggest pro wrestlers of the previous decade after a seven year absence. It wasn’t the norm, it was an exception. Of course following that it looks like the PPV buys are plunging, but it ignores the fact on a show by show basis, 2022 has been AEW’s best year as far as buy rates are concerned, and Cody didn’t wrestle on a single one of them. It also ignores that throughout the entire history of the company, there have been peaks and valleys with regard to PPV buys.
I'm gonna back you up here. The Codyverse became tedious, and his character was incoherent by the end, but the matches delivered and the show's quality overall has dipped in his absence. It's a shame he didn't right the ship for his actual character before the end, but it wasn't nearly as bad as people acted at the time. There's much worse stuff on the show now than the frustration of his will he/won't he babyface to heel storyline. Hell, that exact move has defined AEW since he left! MJF in the men's division, Hayter in the women's division. When will they turn one way or the other? *Will* they turn at all? Tune in next week to see the same story beat play out for the 50th time and wait even longer to find out!
MJF in the women's division would probably inject some excitement!
you are getting downvote, but you are right. Coincidence or not, when cody leaves, all the nonsense started in AEW.
Exactly, no one watches AEW now and misses Cody. His storylines were sometimes the worst part of the weekly shows in a time where AEW was at its peak.
If I remember right the stipulation was added out of the blue. Cody had been feuding with Malakai and Andrade had been feuding with PAC. With them switching round after the 4 way at Full Gear. The stipulation seemed forced and fire spot with Brandi all felt unnecessary. Speculation being that it was done for Rhodes to the Top season 2.
It's just because Atlanta is his home town. Street fights in one's hometown is a staple Cody loves.
One wrestling trope I can see die is the "Insert City Name Here" Street Fight/Brawl whatever. That also includes city nicknames like The Beltway Beatdown or City of Brotherly Love Bashup or what have you.
But with out the Philly Street Fight we wouldn’t have gotten this [beauty.](https://twitter.com/starkmanjones/status/1446151881043161088?s=46&t=DxybrDZm2eQo5DGUSCMKpA)
If there's one thing that took me out of a match ever since I was a child it's brawls in the crowd. I was still shitting my pants and even then I could tell that the guys were just pretend punching and taking long breaks instead of wrestling each other, plus that shit is only marginally cool if they come your way, the other 90% of the arena can't see shit and has to wait until the wrestlers feel like working again.
Honestly, that footage that could have been turned morphed into Rhodes to the Top Season 2 would be interesting to see. I went to the last Chicago show where Brandi was heckled out of the arena during a promo with American Top Team. I’ve never heard go away heat like that in person. It would interesting to see the backstage reaction at the Chicago and Atlanta shows.
I've never understood what they were going for there. Brandi came out and antagonized the crowd right away, saying the wrong city name and clearly heeling it up the entire time until Lambert came out to insult her repeatedly. The only guess I ever had was that it was for a Rhodes to the Top story where Brandi was fed up with the crowds booing Cody
After all this time, I still can’t believe this mfer got that tattoo.
In reality, he was neither of those things by this point and this felt like a desperate attempt to get an audience who had turned on him to cheer for him again.
Agreed. This was in his home state too and he still didn't win over the crowd with these antics. I will forever be convinced that this was the day he seriously started considering going to WWE sooner rather than later.
It was about 75/25 Cody at the GA show. There were Cody Sucks chants but it was still a Cody crowd by a lot.
Was at that show. I hadn’t watched wrestling in years and that instantly made me a Cody fan
He had to have known the jig was up the night he unveiled the tattoo and had that atrocious live performance of his entrance theme. That one night absolutely killed him dead. To his credit, Cody is clearly a lot smarter than we gave him credit for, we all thought he needed a heel turn to freshen up but I think he knew before any of us that he needed a much deeper rehab than that. He proved me, and a lot of us here, wrong. I thought his credibility was permanently damaged after that night.
That neck tattoo/Revolution thing is absolutely revisionist bullshit that this sub loves to spew as truth lol. He went on to have an acclaimed TNT championship reign that ended with him turning Darby into a star. Crowds were still cheering him in the few post-Revolution shows before the pandemic. There were grumbles about him beating Archer in the TNT tournament final or him beating Brodie Lee in the dog collar match after baiting a heel turn, but the majority opinion at the time was that he was still a valuable part of Dynamite. Fans turned on him after the atrocious Ogogo/QT Marshall feud and the strange decision to follow that up with a program with a debuting Malakai Black, just as AEW was getting back on the road for the first time in 18 months. No one was ever going to cheer for him or jeer Malakai.
I don't understand why people view Cody's success in WWE as a surprise. An AEW EVP jumping ship to WWE was automatically going to get over huge with the WWE crowd and Vince was smart enough to not bring Brandi in with him. As far as I'm concerned, Cody took the easy way out by signing with the guy that made him Stardust and then forbade him to use his kayfabe last name for years and started fresh after he buried his own character in AEW. Now, was Cody smart in the sense that he dodged the shitshow that AEW is right now? Yes. But he was always going to go over big in WWE by virtue of him being the first big name to jump ship the other way.
I dont know if I'd describe making your own company and proving you were a draw as the easiest path but yeah
He was getting tons of cheers. I was there and crowd went crazy for Cody lol. Especially the kids.
The crowd was wishy washy during the match, then Brandi got straight out booed when she revealed herself and then the crowd popped for the flame and 3 count but after that it was mostly polite applause. It was no where near the reaction you'd expect for a top name in his hometown.
He saw Punk/MJF was stealing all the shine and said fuck it let’s try for some third degree burns.
I had almost forgotten the flaming table spot
Bro lit himself on fire and still got booed, that sucks lol
I was there and just laughed at the absurdity of it all. Guy is such a try hard.
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I'm not saying the audience lost interest in Cody, but they obviously wanted him to be a heel. He got Cena ONS heat in Chicago around this time and was getting lots of boos everywhere.
You don’t remember Cody lighting himself on fire lol?
Cody was my favorite wrestler, so I wish this was true.
>codyverse stuff tended to have the best ratings every week revisionist history at its best
Honestly it feels like about 3 years since Cody’s been in AEW, I genuinely can’t believe it was less than a year ago. All that being said this quote is honestly pretty ironic because it reminds of the story of him and Jericho making fun of CM Punk for claiming to be the locker room leader in WWE at the time, Cody was absolutely not the face or “quarterback” of AEW at this time, he hadn’t been since he basically took himself out of the world title scene. By this point Jericho, Mox, Hangman, Kenny were all far ahead of him with newer guys like Punk, Danielson and even MJF beginning to truly ascend too. Cody always seems to embellish or do a lot of revisionist history about his AEW run, especially the end. By the time he left he really wasn’t missed if we’re being honest but on the same note he truly could’ve been something special if he actually turned heel and went after the World Championship, especially with how everything’s turned out now. I honestly think if Cody was the one to beat Hangman and go on a run instead of what happened with Punk and all that nonsense, we’d have had probably an all-time run as well as a true cementing of Cody as AEW’s face and made a mega-star out of him, relatively speaking.
Tony was never going to delay putting the title on Punk any longer (and he had the champions laid out til Hangman). Cody might have been to blame for the stip that locked him out of the title picture, but it still wasn't going to happen for him in the present or not distant future. He was stuck, no matter what his character's face/heel/tweener alignment was.
You're probably correct that Tony was all hyped up to do a new "Summer of Punk" and wouldn't have delayed it for anything, but IMO Cody going full heel and going back on his word to challenge Hangman at DoN would have instantly made him the hottest act in the company and set up a crazy hot match between Cody and Punk at All Out with some hot TV defenses for Cody in between. If nothing else having a legit heel champion to transition the title to Punk, even if they did it a month later on Dynamite rather than waiting for All Out, would have been better for both Punk and Hangman.
Christ yeah reading this that would have been so much better. Would have dramatically improved Punks "I'm gonna save the company" angle and would have soften the Hangman blow but the title going to a heel
Considering how things went south for the AEW title in the back half of the year; a first Cody reign instead of the **third** Mox run would have been a better option. Cody ultimately dropping the belt for MJF at Full Gear likely would have had a better storytelling and would have made an MJF loss a possible option. The “tournament of champions” was missing a homegrown star of Cody’s caliber, despite Tony’s efforts of choosing the best of the best.
If Jericho and Moxley aren't considered "homegrown stars" in your estimation, than why is Cody? He was a prominent midcarder in WWE for nearly a decade. I know he increased his value after leaving, but it's odd to me that you'd consider him "homegrown." Also weird to me that you'd say the tourney was missing a "homegrown star" when it literally featured Hangman Page, who is easily the best example of a "homegrown star" (besides MJF) that AEW has. Lastly, I find AEW fans' obsession with "homegrown stars" to be baffling. I just want to see great wrestlers in compelling storylines. Imagine fans in 1984 being upset that Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper weren't "homegrown," or that the nWo weren't "homegrown" in 1996. So odd to me.
I meant it as a figure of speech… As someone whom was with AEW on Day 1, Cody Rhodes winning the title would have made for better storytelling than Chris Jericho getting a second reign or Jon Moxley getting a third reign as champion in an ad-hoc emergency tournament.
What. Cody Was the mainstream face of AEW. He kept doing appearances on tv shows, with Brandi. He was a judge on a contest show with his aew credentials being mentioned all the time. He had his own reality show too He was out there constantly doing interviews
In no way was Cody the mainstream face once Punk came in.
I think so many of you drastically over-estimate how much CM Punk means to anyone that isn't into wrestling.
As opposed to Cody Rhodes?
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I did the math and only around 300k people actually watched out of that 90 million.
Yeah because Cody Rhodes likes to be the guy who glad hands people, he wants to be the John Cena. Clearly hes a better ambassador as punk burned his bridges. Cody was the face because he wanted that
Credit to Cody for making a ton of appearances repping AEW but Jericho was AEW's biggest mainstream star, and then they had Jericho and Punk.
Jericho wasn't doing any outreach. He was their biggest wrestling star but he was not the face of the company by any means. That was all Cody, LOGWATCHER is right.
Jericho was never the face of AEW, but he was the living Legend AEW needed to connect with a widest age range of fans possible. Jericho was the only star to compete in 3 decades (90, 00, 10s) at a high level in different promotions with shifting gimmicks. Jericho even reinvented himself going to NJPW for a short run in that 17/18 range. If AEW didn’t have Jericho on Day 1, I believe Tony would have pushed harder to have Punk on Day 1 or would have worked harder to poach another top WWE star.
I agree. Cody turning heel and beating Hangman would have been ideal and he would have had a great reign. The sad part is I believe a Punk meltdown was inevitable no matter what happened, and if Cody was still here he would have been the one to step up for the company and that would have flipped him right back to being the exact babyface hero he always wanted to be here.
Cody breaking his promise, turning heel, and beating Hangman is EXACTLY what should have happened. He then feuds with Punk with the same talking points about Punk that he had in his final promo before the match against Sammy. Would have been perfect.
It would have been Hangman loses to MJF and Cody comes full circle with the MJF story to beat him. Write that last part however you want, there's lots of routes, if booked well you could do face or heel and it would have been massive.
For me a big part of why Cody fell off toward the end was that there was no quality control with his angles. It very much seemed like Tony Khan gave him the go ahead to do more or less whatever he wanted. I’d be very interested to see what a second run would be like, with a now (hopefully) more seasoned Tony Khan at the helm. Some of that Codyverse stuff should have never made it to TV.
It might have been good, it might have been bad, it might have been confusing, but Cody was rarely boring. You were going to likely see something you'd remember with him. Which is AEW's biggest problem right now to me -- there's not much actually bad, but far too much is definitely boring.
They rely so heavily on trying to create "OMG" moments that none of them are actually "OMG" moments. It is barely a blip but remember when Jericho took the fall off of WarGames? Ya, most people don't either. But we sure do all remember Mick Foley off the top of Hell in a Cell. Why? Because not everyone was taking bumps from tops of cages back then, it was a rare site. Now we see Jericho, Guevara, the Bucks, Death Triangle, Omega and countless others do these "incredible" things that mean nothing because everyone else is doing them. Nothing means anything because they do everything all the time. The Attitude Era style of booking killed long term storytelling for the most part with the hot shotting and craziness. Except nothing seems crazy anymore.
Agree. AEW puts on a good show overall but there has been a lack of things to talk about the next day.
His face run thast year or so wasn't very good, but Cody was one of the only legit looking main event guys ironically who was never in the main event.
Lying >>>
It’s that slow burn heel turn. He can’t help himself lol.
I know he'll turn heel sooner or later
I feel like he was one of the best parts of AEW until that match with Shaq and constantly leaving, returning, fake retirements and all that other stuff that was thrown in there. Then it all went south. He proved what he could do when he went to WWE looked like a superstar again and proved some people (me included) wrong. Didn't think it would play out like that tbh.
The SHAQ match was memorable and a highlight for pandemic AEW
I wasn't crazy about everything Cody Rhodes did in AEW, but none of it bored me. And that's a high compliment.
That’s kind of contradictory
Nope. For me, the worst sin is being mediocre and boring.
Brandi was presented on AEW TV as a heel since day one and her interfering in the match didn't help at all. Cody at the time of that clip was also booed and had short, confusing feuds with added stips that didn't make much sense. He should have gone full on Lex Luger, go for the World Title after his contract technically expired and where he would have signed a new one. But I applaud him for always giving 100%
I don't know why this sticks in my mind so much but that time she rolled in the ring and sat in front of Malakai Black giving him the finger when he was trying to get his character over as a super scary demon-like figure really aggravated me. It was a totally unnecessary spot that took away from his character just so she could have a moment in the spotlight.
I liked it. Especially as his reaction was to laugh.
Well he couldn't really hit her, could he? What else was he going to do? Same with when she said she wanted to fight Dan Lambert. It was showing up guys and making them look weak, knowing they couldn't touch her, for no reason other than attempting to make herself look badass. I'm not saying that's not apart of wrestling because it's been done by valets for decades, but it's not a babyface valet thing to do. Babyfaces take bumps to get the heels over. Heels are the ones that threaten without repercussion until the last showdown. That hurt both Malakai and Cody's characters for absolutely no reason other than Brandi wanted to be on screen character.
I just want to know what changed & started the Codyverse
I always wondered why we never saw The Elite with Cody
….did fans really see him as the face/QB?
Some fans were apparently only tuning in for the codyverse stuff and left when he left. I've never seen one or heard from one but the numbers reflect that.
To an extent, yeah. He lost the support later on, but I think people thought of him as that QB role, at least compared to the other EVPs.
Then someone needs to apologize for that weigh in.
The whole idea of doing a weigh in was stupid so that's on Cody but if anyone should publicly apologize for that debacle it's Paul Wight for giving us all secondhand embarrassment.
I love Cody but that was still a stupid spot for a nothing feud
This moment is when it all clicked for me. Cody wasn't the brilliant heel playing 4D chess, running a delusional face gimmick. He went through a flaming table to get cheered. It's also when I went from being tired of him to actually liking him once again. Dude really went through a flaming table on TV just for a pop.
i dont get it. i never saw him as the face of anything... He had a few cool matches i guess but all he has in my eyes is his name... Bullet Club/The Elite was the reason i was interested in aew
Cody Rhodes is my favorite liar in the wrestling industry.
I don't think so
ADRENALINE IN MY SOUL HAD TO SHOEHORN MY WIFE ONTO THIS SHOW
Set the mold for everyone else.
Another delusional Cody statement
He’s not wrong, everytime he was on tv it felt special and had a strange aura when doing whatever he was doing, felt like a big deal with a big star and a big story going on, even if he was booed most of the time
Someday I want someone to admit that they realized that someone else's segments were better and more talked about and were the centerpiece of the show.
I fucking hate the IWC for turning on this guy. He always gave it his all until the very last day .
AEW was more fun when cody was handling things backstage, that i know for sure.
Cody was smart. If they don’t see you as a main eventer go to a smaller pond and become a main eventer and make New York want you back. I thought he was corny and phony but he was a stabilizing figure. The second he left the company went to shit. Notice how the whisper campaigns by Ty and the Jesus Twins conveniently leave him out when they retell the origins of AEW.
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Idk about all that lol
This guy is detached from reality if he thinks he was ever the face of AEW. I mean even Tony Khan didn't care about having him at the start. He wanted Jericho, Kenny, the Bucks, and Punk. Jericho was the first face, then Kenny, Mox, and Punk traded it around a bit. Dude's delusional.
As a Cody in AEW Hater myself you are delusional if you think he wasn't over like rover and the active media / face of the revolution guy in 2019 into early 2020. AEW had tons of young upstart energy, something Jericho certainly didn't have. It's the tattoo and downstrait thing that starts his decline. But before then, he was the face.
It's fucking bonkers to me that Cody and the Bucks never got a piece of equity in that company. They literally built it with those events. If Khan tried starting it from the ground up it never gets as a big. Those guys got fucked out of 10s of millions of dollars if not more if they renew and double their TV contract.
That is really the dumbest thing those guys have ever done. The company is named after them for gods sake. They just handed their golden goose to tony khan and may get like 1-2 mil max per year for it as long as they are with the company.
This is all part of his AEW heel turn, you’ll see.
AEW sure has gone down hill since Cody left.
Sounds right, AEW lost 20% of it's viewers since he left.
My dad absolutely hated Brandi after this spot and thought Cody was a fool. But yeah, had we been there live, it would have been glorious to see.
I want to see Tony Khan do the TO for Cody next scrum. "That my quarterback man"
You could argue Cody was one of the faces of the company early on in AEW. The crowds were behind him and his stuff felt like a big deal. But by this point, the match with Andrade, he was not the face of the company or even close to it. Once he got lost in the Codyverse, that was it for him being one of the faces of the company. Now I still think he could have pulled off a good heel run, which is what I think a lot of us were expecting, but it never happened. Now he’s in WWE and positioned as one of the top faces. Funny how a change of scenery can make such a big difference.
As someone who watched this epsiode with family, they were tuned to basketball instead. We flipped back at the end of the match and my dad saw Cody and said “that guy looks like hes been through hell” and that was it lol
The only period Cody was the biggest star was his MJF feud. (Also maybe Jericho was bigger) He was a mega star when he did that cage match with Wardlow. At the point he referenced AEW fans were sick of him (with good reason).
I mean, that spot is still mentioned in my household. Every time someone does something that looks like it could go real bad real quick, one of us says "...well, still wasn't as stupid as the burning table. Man, that was so damn stupid." Not sure if that's how Cody wants it to be remembered, but that's how it is...
This is a little revisionist history from Cody. This match was pretty long after he was the 'quarterback'. His run had lost focus by then and gone off the rails. It was one of the things that showed he was trying to do something to get back on track. I still have no idea what happened creatively with him in AEW. But when he says stuff like this I just think he viewed himself as the veteran megastar from day one, like later career Cena, while the fans were saying 'ok now we finally get to see Cody reach his potential'. I think he felt like his work in IMPACT, ROH, Japan, and the indies that led up to AEW, was equivalent to having a face of the company title run for a major TV company...and it just wasn't. Fans were still waiting for him to hit his prime, and he thought he already had done it all, and was looking to 'give back'.
Fucking Ango with the first reply, that dude is so lame.