Cody Rhodes ‘honored’ to be a polarizing WWE wrestler
Cody Rhodes isn’t worried about the recent shift in how some WWE crowds are reacting to him.
As he enters his third WWE Championship reign, Rhodes told Insight with Chris Van Vliet that he’s more polarizing now than the first two times he held the belt. He appreciates the passion from fans either way, and Rhodes feels like he’s built up thick skin after previously struggling with that.
“But I’ll tell you an area that’s changing is: I was never a polarizing wrestler. Now I’m a polarizing wrestler,” Rhodes said. “I’m honored by it. I’m honored by the passion of both sides of the coin. What I would like to do to honor those who are so excited and those who are so not excited, however you put it, is I want to make sure that I’m not gotten to by it. And I think with everything I’ve been through and everything in the business, you hear people say, ‘You got thick skin.’ I can definitely say I have thick skin now, because I used to not have thick skin.”
There have been both “home games” and “away games” for Rhodes with certain cities responding to him differently. No matter how people react, Rhodes is just focused on entertaining them.
“I think John [Cena] had it perfect,” Rhodes said. “Watching John [and] having my own skin really, really beat up and thickened up over the course of my career has made it so that I think I’ve got the lane I can run in and make something very entertaining for both sides of the coin.”
Rhodes’ third reign with the WWE Championship began when he defeated Drew McIntyre on SmackDown last Friday. He’s now heading into WrestleMania 42 as champion and will defend the title against Randy Orton in Las Vegas, where Rhodes received some boos at WrestleMania 41 last year.
Joseph Currier is the lead editor of F4WOnline.com, directing daily news coverage and writing articles on professional wrestling. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, obtaining a journalism degree in 2016. Joseph joined F4W during his time at UMass and has now been writing about the industry for nearly a decade.
In addition to his work with F4W, Joseph has previously contributed to Sports Illustrated's wrestling coverage. He lives in Massachusetts and is a diehard fan of the Boston sports teams and Liverpool Football Club.