Cody Rhodes Says People In AEW Put Out 'Propaganda' About Him When He Left

Cody Rhodes’ exit from All Elite Wrestling in 2022 was surprising to say the least, with Rhodes walking away from the company he helped build to return to WWE.

Whilst the exact nature of Rhodes’ AEW departure remains unknown beyond that he and Tony Khan had a personal issue, Rhodes remains a supporter of the company from the sidelines, though he felt some within the organisation put out ‘propaganda’ about him after his departure:

"The narrative changed a lot about my contributions to AEW," Cody told Peter Rosenberg on Cheap Heat. “That was very disappointing. There were some people - I'm not going to say their names, they know who they were - who kind of tried to put some propaganda out when I left. There's a quote in the Young Bucks book about how I was last to the signing. Me, Matt, and Nick [Jackson] are as close as ever. So glad I had them in my career and my life. If we are being honest, AEW does not happen without me. It doesn't. With that in mind, I could never root against them. It's like having a kid and they go off to college and they get a DUI or they get in trouble. I'll always have that in my heart for them.

"It was certainly a wound that is more gaping and painful than people realise because now they look at the situation, 'oh man, you're on top of the world, you have everything.' They don't understand that I really gave everything I could. I did. I could never see a day where I was rooting against them. From a completely outside-of-me perspective, my relationship to AEW, my friends, the kids I signed, and the people from my school. From outside of that, it's very important that they hang in there because if that were to go away, I don't think anybody in the locker room has any clue of the financial repercussions that would have on the wrestling business. The trickle-down effect that would have on independent wrestling. We've created a really comfortable environment in sports entertainment for men and women to feed their families and to do well and be treated on a level that their global penetration ask for. I would hate to see that bubble burst. That's a random fear I have when they're down or if they're up or whatever it may be. I would never root against them, in any case. That's not always easy because random things said about you at press conferences, and that's a big no no, you should never say me or my wife's name, Tony [Khan] should have told you that. I'll never root against them, I really won't."

H/T: Fightful