The departure of Cody Rhodes from AEW is an interesting to discuss for wrestling fans, but one thing related to the subject that is ignore is his legacy on the promotion.
Helping The Young Talent
Since day 1 of AEW, Cody Rhodes has been instrumental regarding AEW and young wrestlers for the promotion. From helping getting them over on every way he could to bring new talent through the Nightmare Factory.
Darby Allin, Sammy Guevara, MJF and Ricky Starks are some of the young wrestlers he help out throughout his run in one way or another.
Establishing The TNT Title
When AEW announced the TNT Title, people were a bit doubtful and thought that this new championship would be treated like just a secondary title like we’ve seen in other promotions. Cody Rhodes made it his mission to help estabilish from day one and that it wouldn’t be treated like the intercontinental title is in WWE.
Cody Rhodes’ open TNT Title challenge was reminiscent of one John Cena had with the US title back in 2015, and just like Cena’s open challenge it worked. It also helped get wrestlers like Eddie Kingston and Ricky Starks contracts in AEW, And let’s not forget all the young wrestlers he help during this run, like previously mentioned.
The TNT Title has always been treated as an important title and is thanks to Cody from day one to even his last day on the promotion by dropping the title in a 5 star match to Sammy Guevara.
The World Title Stipulation
During his feud with Chris Jericho over the AEW world title, Rhodes made the bold claim that he would not challenge for the AEW title again if he were to lose the match. This claim was met with skepticism because stipulations historically have never matter in pro-wrestling, but Rhodes kept his word.
By keeping to his word, this meant that stipulations in AEW matter and they’ll keep their word. Doing this helped AEW even more by winning their fans’ trust.
Grey Character
Cody has always been a grey area character. He has mentioned this on interviews and in promos. For better and/or worse, that was Cody Rhodes in AEW.
You could have great fire moments from Cody like we saw him on his feud with Jericho and in some ways he was the babyface ace of the promotion during ity first year. But he also had bad moments like him not reading the room regarding America and this was in a way the catalyst for fans starting to boo him on every show despite being a babyface.
Despite fans starting to boo him, Cody went more meta regarding this and made to backstage stuff and other stuff. Cody also started to tease stuff regarding his parallelisms with Triple H.
Cody did a lot of good for AEW. He’ll be missed in the promotion in ways we don’t even realized yet. Cody will always be part of AEW and viceversa.
