Cody Rhodes on Him Being “Honored” To Be Polarizing Wrestler, Still Having A Lot More To Do To Surpass His Father Dusty’s Legacy, His Codyvator Spot with John Cena at WWE SummerSlam 2025, Interaction with Roman Reigns on Set During Street Fighter Filming

A recent episode of the Insight with Chris Van Vliet podcast featured Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Rhodes’ thoughts about him being a polarizing wrestler and how he feels honored to be considered one in wrestling.

“That’s the thing. I’m honored by it. I’m honored by the passion of both sides of the coin. What I would like to do and to honor those who are so excited and those who are so not, however you’d put it, is I want to make sure that I’m not gotten to by it. 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.”

Rhodes also gave his thoughts about if he is trying to win over the audience that might be booing him.

“I don’t want to say no, but there’s a really great line, you watch Rick and Morty? What does he say? He says something about, ‘I don’t care that you boo me, because I’ve seen what you cheer,’ and that is very much my approach often. I spoke about this recently with the big dude from Barstool, Brandon [Walker]. I spoke about that Leslie Knope Parks and Rec episode about bowling, where she spent so much time on the guy who was never going to vote for it in the first place. Unfortunately, you do that to discount your own, the people who are already there for you, but I don’t want to be against them either, if that makes any sense. I think John had it perfect, and watching John, 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 also gave his thoughts about his belief that he has yet to surpass his late father Dusty’s legacy in wrestling and how he still has a lot more to do in his wrestling career for that to happen.

“I don’t think he’d mind me sharing this, Mr. Heyman told me that. And I thought he might be the one guy I believe it, right? Because I don’t, even when I’m by myself and doing one of these [interviews], I still don’t believe that. Because I think Dusty’s legacy had such a final chapter that it still goes on today.

I mean, they’re still doing things of his today. And there’s a whole fandom that will never even know they were his brainchild or something that he — this is a silly one, but for example, the cage lowering with the [sound], that’s a Dusty thing. These production things are still in play.

I appreciate you saying it. I think I have a lot more to do. But, yeah, that’s really nice.”

Rhodes also gave his thoughts about the Codyvator style spot during his match against John Cena for the Undisputed WWE Championship at this past August’s WWE SummerSlam 2025 event and who’s idea it was for that spot.

“I don’t want to tell you whose idea it was, but I can say this, there’s a guy backstage who runs Gorilla. Shout out to him, Temarrio. He does not like the Codyvator. I like that he calls it the Codyvator, because we could easily just call it a lift like it’s denoted in a production budget. But he doesn’t like the Codyvator, because the Codyvator is pretty expensive, and if we’re only going to use it for me to come up and I prefer it’s only me. But I joked with him a lot that, hey, look, dude, we’re getting bang for your buck here, two uses of the Codyvator, and it made him feel better about the use of it that night. So yeah, I’ll go ahead and credit Triple H for that one, easiest one to credit for it, but that was fun. Also, you can tell how strong a man really is when you’re going at a tiny, incremental pace and the floor is lifting you, and still had me, and I think wanted to carry me 70 yards, but didn’t need to. I can fall off your shoulders at a certain point. He’s still got it. John, certainly, all the functional strength, and you’ve seen all the hard knocks videos and all that, that’s never gonna go away.”

Rhodes also gave his thoughts about how he felt about portraying the Guile character from the Street Fighter video game series during the filming of the new live action Street Fighter film.

“In my mind, like Green Day, ‘Time of your life’ is playing. I had so much fun.”

Rhodes also gave his thoughts about if he shared any scenes with Roman Reigns, who portrays Akuma, and his interaction with him during the filming.

“We actually, I’m gonna tell you something, we had one day on set, and the way the set was, and he could probably reiterate this, I think they thought we were going to fight or have issue. Because they were very cognizant on the radios of stepping out with Guile, Akuma will be coming on. They were very cognizant of we would not cross paths. And we did because I had to tell him the direction of one of the trailers. 

That was our only moment, and it was a very awkward, like the weirdest, that’s a crazy relationship. I have nothing but admiration for what he’s done and accomplished, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t know, I don’t even like talking about it because I don’t know what it is. It’s just a very strange relationship.”

Rhodes also gave his thoughts about whether his issues were with Joe Anoa’i the person or Roman Reigns the wrestler.

“I don’t know if there’s a difference and the same as me. Ask him that damn question. Yeah, but I can tell you from what I saw of his fight, if he has a fight, I can tell you what I saw was really special. And I think fans of Street Fighter, Kitao Sakurai put something really special together. And when you have an Andrew Schultz, a 50 Cent, Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, Orville Peck, gosh, Vidyut when you have all these fun, unique characters, and then you have Noah Centineo, you have Koji, you have Callina as the heart of the movie. It really gave us a great ensemble that we could have fun. We could not goof around, but we could try things.” 

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2, F4WOnline.com 1 & 2