The Cody Rhodes free agency saga has seemingly come to an end as PWInsider is reporting that The American Nightmare has agreed to terms on a deal with WWE. The terms of the deal haven’t been divulged.
This ends a three month free agent process for Cody, in which he competed for AEW during that time and held the TNT Championship for a record third-time. Cody was perhaps the most integral figure in the early days of All Elite Wrestling, working also as an Executive Vice President and the head of their Community Outreach program. This is the first major defection from AEW since their inception.
For Cody Rhodes, it’s a homecoming of sorts. Cody signed with WWE originally in 2006, making his Raw debut and winning the tag championships with Bob Holly in 2007. Over his career, Cody won tag championships with Holly, Ted DiBiase, Drew McIntyre and Goldust. In 2010, Rhodes debuted the ‘Dashing’ Cody Rhodes character which ultimately evolved into ‘Grotesque’ Cody Rhodes. The character work ended up establishing Cody as a singles star and he’d win the Intercontinental Championship from Ezekiel Jackson in August of 2011. Cody saw a modicum of more success, but ended up portraying the Stardust character in 2013 and exiting the company when his contract came to an end.
From there, Cody travelled from promotion to promotion, similar to McIntyre a year before him, to rebuild his stock in wrestling. Becoming the face of Bullet Club and the Elite, he’d win World Championships for the NWA and ROH, while also being crowned the IWGP United States Champion.
In PWInsider’s report, Mike Johnson confirmed that Rhodes will return at the upcoming WrestleMania event and be on the Raw brand going forward, potentially verifying the recent report that he was still set to wrestle Seth Rollins at WrestleMania by the WON.
Bodyslam will keep you as up-to-date as possible on Cody’s WWE return.
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