Cody Rhodes can’t escape the story of Vince McMahon flying to his house in order to bring him back to WWE.
RAW Superstar Cody Rhodes was a recent guest on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet to discuss a wide variety of subjects. When asked if he remembered the first thing Vince McMahon said to him face to face when he flew to his home to recruit him back to WWE, Rhodes said he believes the first thing he did was laugh.
“That’s a good question, I think he laughed. He has that like, [impersonates Vince laugh] I think he laughed,” Cody Rhodes said. “Because I kind of snuck in. But I like leaned over him, and I think he kind of laughed. I remember going in to talk to him. I wasn’t afraid of anything, and I was overcompensating almost.
“I’ve used the Bernie Mac reference a bunch, but he walks out and the crowds kind of booing him, he tells me he’s not scared of them. That’s really where I was at. It’s like, we’re good. Not scared of anything here; let’s talk. And I was almost overcompensating because both Vince and Bruce were so welcoming. So, this is the term I can use, sweet, and so positive about what I had done. And the fact that they knew what I had done and actually were citing different things, like I saw this, I saw this, I couldn’t believe it.
It was very self-affirming. And it just went like that type of happy-go-lucky. We’re talking about, I had, you know, Liberty was a year old or maybe not even at that time. He’s talking to me about what it’s like to be a dad for a daughter and how special it is, it was just beautiful. And then like in the last 20 seconds of the meeting it was, Seth Rollins at WrestleMania, you know, that’s where the only business came up.
“And it was, I told Brandi I would say this, but I was adamant about saying please don’t do one of those hey, this is the deal, if you leave it’s off the table, don’t do one of those. I have to leave and think about it. I have to. And even in your mind, you’re like yep, I think we’re gonna do that. Even your mind, I have to leave to think about it and take some time because man, we had made such massive decisions. And I’m kind of a career left turn guy with, no way would he do this, well he did that. So this one was going to be something similar but really special. Didn’t feel like a meeting until maybe the last 30 seconds.”
Adrenaline, In My Soul…
When asked whose idea it was to utilize the “whoa” in his theme song Kingdom as part of his entrance, Rhodes gave credit to Kevin Dunn for coming up with that.
“So you know, the whoa had been in different versions of Downstait music for me,” Cody Rhodes revealed. “Yeah, the whoa had been present. So I think really you’d have to say Kevin Dunn. Because Kevin looked at an AEW entrance of mine, and I said it has to be this. This is what it is, I’m not, you know, calling any shots. But this is what I, to be fair, this is what I would like. This is representative of who I am.
“He was of the thought of ‘great, we are just gonna make it a little bit better, we’re just going to make it a little bit better.’ And we tried some entrances that the world never saw, just different things during the day, we could do this, do that. And he set it up where it was most conducive for Monday Night Raw with the way the staging is on Monday Night Raw to do that and not have to build the Codyvater every day at three o’clock in the afternoon and maybe, maybe save it for let’s save it for a pay-per-view or a WrestleMania, which we did.
“But he’d have to be to blame for the whoas, because he loves the idea of singing, loves it, and you can hear him calling for that, I want to see people singing, and you can hear it. And that’s just never anything that I thought about. But I can say one of the most important things with the logo I knew wasn’t gonna change as I got the tattoo. [What did Vince to the tattoo?] He, again, laughed but that was one moment where I said, he had mentioned that there’s all kinds of designs we could do and I told him well that one we’re pretty locked in on.
“But the one thing I was really clear about of all things, the music has to stay the same. And the reason the music had to stay the same was the music wasn’t just at AEW. The music was at Ring of Honor, New Japan, every independent I could possibly go to all over the world. That was the music, including the line that I recorded on my iMac in my living room, gosh knows when, the ‘wrestling has more than one royal family.’
“For sure they were going to take that out, for sure. No way, somehow, someway, we’ll get there and it says sports entertainment. Like we’ll be dubbed over the wrestling but no, they kept it let it be. And there was a version of my song if I can find it, I’ll send it to you. There was a version of my song that was different, that was an option.
“And I just thought I think the audience would be really mad. Kingdom is I’ll follow you to the end. we can’t discredit that. We have to, we have to have it. So that was probably the most important piece of okay, we’re gonna bring the nightmare brand as it is. The most important piece is that song. I didn’t know it, but I was fighting for it.”
READ MORE: Cody Rhodes: Being ‘The American Nightmare’ Wasn’t Possible A Few Years Ago
What do you make of Cody Rhodes’ comments? What are your thoughts when it comes to his recent run in WWE? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
