It’s been almost exactly four years when Cody Rhodes left AEW and rejoined WWE, returning at WrestleMania 38 to take on Seth Rollins. In that time, Rhodes hasn’t gone into too many specifics on the reasons for his departure, which initially shocked the industry as he was in an executive role with AEW.
Rhodes did his media rounds this week in New York, and while appearing on The Breakfast Club on Power 105.1 FM, he was asked to elaborate a bit more on comments he made in the past where he credited his wife Brandi for making a “selfless” decision to stay silent and not discuss why the pair left AEW.
“Our departure from when we left the company we were with and helped create, and that was AEW, it came down to her deciding to not talk about it, that departure. Like, ‘We’re not going to talk about it. We’re moving on. Did bad stuff happen? Good stuff happened too. I’m not going to talk about it.’”
“And one of the sad things about not talking about why we left and the departure, one of the difficult things was narratives get created. Stories get told, podcasts happen, fans literally think they know what happened when no one’s been even close. And what I would say is the selfless part, she lives with that. She owns that. She respects not just here, but the place we left enough to, ‘I’m not going to talk about that.’ And that made it so that, they’re good. They’re out of here. That was very, very helpful for us. And again, good stuff happened there too. But that’s what I mean by selfless, because she lives with that.”
Since leaving AEW, Rhodes has shared that a personal issue was at the heart of his decision to leave AEW, adding that he felt disrespected towards the end of his run. However, despite those comments, Rhodes has praised the promotion and only has had good things to say about AEW and President Tony Khan, who himself has also only had positive comments about Rhodes.