Was Cody Rhodes playing a heel during the end of his tenure in AEW?
While the American Nightmare previously declared that he’d never turn heel, that led to him getting even more heat with fans who had already decided that they didn’t like him and weren’t going to cheer for him.
Speaking to Ariel Helwani for BT Sport, Rhodes revealed that it was an intentional heel move. He said,
“I think if you’re going to be a bad guy today, you have to really be a bad guy. The number one thing a heel is supposed to do is take something away, the crowd wants to see something, oh, they’re stomping their feet, they’re clapping their hands, and then you take it away. The last heel run I had, the number one thing they wanted me to do was to turn heel so the number one thing that I could do was say, ‘I’m never going to turn heel,’ which makes me a heel.”
He continued, “If people need further proof that this wasn’t some revisionist history, look at the matches I’m having, I’m bumping and feeding. Maybe it was a bit too nuanced for any audience, and maybe it was a scenario where I swing and miss, you never know because I think people really thought I was adamant about not turning and that’s not a real thing.”
