Cody Rhodes clarifies why he doesn’t think he was mature enough for AEW EVP position

During an appearance on Fox Sports’ Out of Character with Ryan Satin, Cody Rhodes expanded on previous comments he made about feeling like he wasn’t mature enough for his executive vice president position with AEW.

Rhodes returned to WWE at WrestleMania 38 earlier this month. In a media scrum after the show, Rhodes said he doesn’t think he wants a management job in pro wrestling ever again. Rhodes said he doesn’t feel like he was mature enough for the EVP position he had in AEW.

When asked why he doesn’t feel he was mature enough, Rhodes told Satin that he thinks the EVP role may have suited him better at a later point in his life. Rhodes admitted that, in hindsight, the decision he made to take himself out of the AEW World Championship picture was a mistake. Rhodes said he wasn’t mature enough to balance being a top wrestler and an executive at the same time.

I think that role, I did well with it. I was very active. And I did start a department, the community department. And Brandi did bring KultureCity into the wrestling and sports entertainment space. So we were very active in terms of all the facets and assets of that gig.

But I think that job was meant maybe for — we wanted a wrestling company brought to you by wrestlers, for sure, that’s a huge part of the mission. But maybe it would have been better served for me at age 45 than it did at age, you know, 33, or whatever it was. I am just now entering the prime of my career. So to make political decisions, like boxing myself out of winning a World Championship, those decisions, in hindsight, were not the correct decisions and what I should have been doing.

I’m the best wrestler in the world, Ryan. I can tell you that without it sounding braggadocious. And it’s simply because this is all I do. I train to do it. I live and breathe it, I have a school here with four rings. I treat this like an athlete in the NFL would treat a game and their team.

But with that in mind, I needed to go and be that. And I wanted to be both and it was just too difficult, and that’s where I did not have the maturity to balance it. It wasn’t a matter of being one of the boys versus not — because I’m no longer just one of the boys. I love it and wish I could be one, but I’ve been in this position before. I’ve been on the other side. I’ve been in these production meetings and things of that nature. And I’ve been part of the technical production. But I just think it would have served me better a little later in my life when I could look at a show and say I don’t want to be in the top spot.

You need that good competition in your locker room — that positive, real competition — and if I can’t be the best wrestler in the world on television because I’m afraid I’m going to offend colleagues, because I am also their boss, that was the situation we were in, and I just played it in the middle. There was only so much of playing it in the middle I could do.

Now, I’m not in charge of nothing other than me and being a pro wrestler. And I say to you, I’m the best wrestler in the world, and I’ve felt like it for years. But now we’re in a situation where I do have to be careful of how I say it because I’m not carrying the belt. Brock and Roman, they combined these championships and you have your Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. That’s the big one. That needs no weight. That’s the truth. The truth needs no weight. That’s the big one. I don’t have it. So that may be the main difference between me and the other best wrestler in the world is that one of them is wearing the title and one isn’t.

Rhodes defeated Seth Rollins at WrestleMania 38 night one. The two will face off in a rematch at WrestleMania Backlash on Sunday, May 8.

On Raw, Rhodes has declared that his mission in coming back to WWE is to accomplish the one thing in pro wrestling that his family has never been able to do: win the WWE Championship.