Cody Rhodes recently clarified some statements he had made about Tony Khan and The Elite after the AEW President debunked some of those aforementioned claims of his. This was about the interactions they had in the early days before the promotion even came into existence.
A few days ago, The American Nightmare spoke on Insight with Chris Van Vliet about how he was not a fan of The Young Bucks mentioning in their book that he was the last of the EVPs to sign in on AEW, as this may have tainted his reputation with the people reading it. He then claimed that he was the first person to actually meet Tony Khan during the vetting process.
Earlier today, Tony Khan revealed that it was Matthew Jackson he met first, and that he only met Cody Rhodes later on when the vetting process had begun. Rhodes replied to a post on X/Twitter about this revelation and said his piece. He clarified that it was indeed Matthew who met Tony Khan first and that what he said was consistent. This probably means that his recent statement could have been taken out of context.
"I said he met Tony first. Exactly what he said. In the vetting/feeling out process. Stories are the same, nobody is mad at anybody," Rhodes replied.
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Cody Rhodes also spoke about his AEW departure
During the same interview with Chris Van Vliet, The American Nightmare talked about the time when his run with AEW came to an end, and how at the time, he took the high road and did not say anything about the company.
He continued by talking about how some fans wrote a certain narrative for him. They apparently wanted to paint him to be the villain in the story and how they wanted to portray that no one wanted him to be there.
"Have you seen the end of The Dark Knight? I think it’s super convoluted, and I’m not comparing myself to Batman, but there’s a piece of it that’s really important. To certain fans from the AEW fandom, they need the story to be [that] they didn’t want me, they pushed me out. They need, ‘He was bad,’ they need that story. They need me to be the villain," Cody Rhodes said. [H/T - Fightful]
It has been more than two years now since Cody made his return to WWE, and he has been on the run of a lifetime, as he now holds the Undisputed WWE Title. On the other hand, AEW continues to be one of the major promotions around the world, so each of the EVPs did end up seeing success.