Cody Rhodes Making More Money Now Than With WWE

Cody Rhodes is having arguably the greatest run of his career. This statement seems hard to believe considering the son of a son of a plumber spent nearly a decade working for the biggest company in wrestling. On a June 28th interview with Ring Rust Radio (heard above), Rhodes says that he is making more money now than when he was working for the WWE.

“The truth is, the Bullet Club has done more for me. I don’t know why, that’s the power of the Young Bucks, if that makes any sense. Me being able to piggyback off their watershed deal with Hot Topic and being able to be in stores, I honestly don’t do it, but I should call them every morning and say thank you very much for making it so I’m making more money on my own schedule than I was with the biggest wrestling company in the world. “

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Now going by “The American Nightmare” (a perfect play on his father’s moniker), Cody is finding life outside of the WWE more rewarding than even he expected. In an earlier interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Rhodes discussed his journey and gave a surprising thought on the WWE’s position as the end-all be-all for every professional wrestler. While Cody still remains complimentary of his former employer, he does believe a wrestler can “make it” without the big machine behind them.

“The part that shocks me the most is that professional wrestlers today do not need WWE. WWE is the biggest, most wonderful company, and they have WrestleMania, so almost any professional wrestler is going to seek that goal. However, it’s no longer needed, because in the era of social media and streaming, wrestling fans have more options than they’ve ever had. So instead of feeling backwards to me, it’s almost feels linear. It feels like, “OK, I’m no longer just a WWE guy, but you can catch me with Evolve, Ring of Honor, TNA.” Originally, I had the same thought process you did, especially coming from second or third generation. There used to be a rule in the business that you would go to Japan when you were a youngster, even if you only went for a month, when you were second or third generation. And then you would be able to say, “Oh, well I’ve wrestled in Japan,” so there was this cred. But it was kind of a lie when second and third-generations’ fathers would kind of put their kids up to it.”

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In the Ring Rust interview, Cody also dropped an interesting tidbit about the last discussion he had with his legendary father, WWE Hall of Famer, Dusty Rhodes.

“I don’t think babyfaces and heels exist anymore. There’s good guys and there’s bad guys and there’s stars. And that’s what you want to be. That’s one of the last conversations I had with my dad about the industry. The only constant in wrestling is that there is no constant.”

The constant now is that Cody is doing exactly what he wants on his own terms.