During an appearance on Games with Names, top WWE star Seth Rollins talked about various topics, including Cody Rhodes' return to the company and their matchup at WrestleMania 38.
This is what Seth Rollins said, “At this point, Cody had only been back for a few months. He came back to WWE after a long hiatus, started a rival company, AEW, and had been making some headway over there. And then he comes back to WWE at WrestleMania as my mystery opponent, which [is] legitimately about as last-minute as you can get for a WrestleMania match. And that was a big deal for our industry to have someone—he was like the first guy who had left, gone to AEW, and then had come back. And I was tasked with working with him right out of the gate. We were looking to make him a big star. He had done his due diligence while he was gone to get himself to a position where, when we brought him back, he was ready to be one of the top acts in the company, which, when he left, he was not that guy. Top brass didn’t see him as that guy, so he was coming back in a position where they were hoping that they could groom him to be in the John Cena position. And so, he was more than excited to get in the ring with me. He’s someone whom I’ve had a lot of history with. His father helped kind of hone him and build him in developmental. I worked with him and his brother a lot when my group, The Shield, first came in WWE back in 2012. And so, there was a lot of history there, and he was more than happy to step into the ring with me.”
On when he learned he would face Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 38:
“There were conversations about matches. I didn’t know about Cody for sure until the middle of March. For sure. WrestleMania is in April, so we had maybe a month of lead time knowing Cody was coming. Even two weeks before, I was like, ‘Do we have his signature on a piece of paper?’ It was very top secret, and there were very few people who knew what was going on.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
