Cody Rhodes has revealed that a bout with Sting was on the cards had he extended his deal with AEW.
‘The American Nightmare’ departed AEW in February 2022 before the dream match could take place, arriving in WWE two months later as Vince McMahon’s hand-picked mystery opponent for Seth ‘Freakin’ Rollins at WrestleMania 38. Rhodes recently detailed the meeting he had with Vince McMahon prior to his stunning return.
Rhodes explained the previously untold plans in an interview with ComicBook.com:
“I was going to wrestle Sting. I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anybody and nothing was on paper or anything like that.
But I can say I got a tremendous offer from AEW creatively, financially, the full package. You won’t hear me say anything bad about AEW or Tony (Khan) or my time there. It was a tremendous offer, but the offer wasn’t right for me.
What I wanted to get back to was the first goal that I ever had (winning the WWE Championship). But yeah, that probably would’ve been the endgame. That’s what had been discussed, was to get one (match) with one of my heroes, Sting.”
Cody Rhodes Opted To Work With Triple H Instead Of Sting
Rhodes would go on to note that the opportunity to work alongside Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque was too good to turn down:
“And it’s one of those things, you can wrestle one of your heroes or you can work with one of your heroes and he can be the head of creative (Paul Levesque), you can’t have it all.
And I think one thing I do pride myself on as a wrestler is I will make a decision. It might be a left turn, it might be exactly where you think I’m going, but I will make a decision. I will not get stuck because I felt like I’d been stuck early in my career and never want to be that way again.”
H/T: Fightful for the above transcript