Cody Rhodes on leaving AEW: It was time for me to be a player & not a coach

As part of his media rounds promoting his main event match at this weekend’s WWE WrestleMania 39, Cody Rhodes talked to Bleacher Report about his AEW experience with a nod toward why it was time to leave.

Rhodes will challenge undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns on Sunday’s second night in an effort to capture his first-ever World title in either WWE or AEW.

His role as a player/coach of sorts in AEW was something that portended his end there as he was taking losses to talents earlier than he felt should happen:

“I was letting some of them beat me long before they should ever beat me,” he confesses of AEW’s upstarts. “I wanted them to succeed, and I still do, but it wasn’t time for me to be a coach. It was time for me to be a player.”

He didn’t mention who he was specifically referring to, but a look through Rhodes’ AEW in-ring run doesn’t show a lot of defeats. In singles losses, he was defeated by Sammy Guevara, Andrade El Idolo, Malakai Black, Brodie Lee, Darby Allin, MJF and Chris Jericho during his entire run while his losses in tag team and multi-person matches were fairly minimal.

Rhodes’ sister, Teil, also intimated that his workload and commitments while in AEW was spreading him thin and away from his true love: being in the ring:

“People forget that during the early AEW days, you have this really hot thing and then the pandemic hits. You’re trying to figure out how to keep producing a TV show when half your colleagues are on the West Coast, so during that time, he didn’t sleep. It was work, work, work.

Those other things that were brought under the umbrella of the media company, you want to try them, but he was definitely spread thin, and when you really get down to the brass tacks of who Cody is, he is a pro wrestler. That’s what he loves, it’s his whole life.”

After six years away from WWE spent rebuilding his name on the indies and then co-founding AEW, Rhodes signed with WWE last year and debuted at last year’s WrestleMania, spending a considerable amount of time on the sidelines after tearing his pectoral muscle. He earned his shot at Reigns by winning this year’s men’s Royal Rumble.