Cody Rhodes will probably be entering one more WrestleMania because the WWE Champion this 12 months, defending the title against Randy Orton because the vaunted “QB1” of the corporate.
But there was a time before he had finished his story, when he had not won the WWE Championship, had not made his grand return at WrestleMania 38, and plied his trade elsewhere.
There was a time when the person that serves because the face of the corporate had positioned himself because the beacon of the choice. And while nobody will truly speak to why the circumstance modified, Rhodes was very much on his method to being the face of AEW.
History will now speak of that point as a stepping stone on his way back to WWE, but for a time Rhodes was a founder and EVP to the primary true competitor to WWE in quite a while, and went on to grow to be a three-time TNT Champion.
Though he would never give you the chance to grow to be anything greater than that having lost a World Championship match against Chris Jericho at Full Gear 2019.
The stipulation set out that Rhodes losing would mean he could never challenge for the title again, and MJF threw within the towel for Rhodes ensuring that he lost. A striking parallel with Revolution this Sunday, as MJF takes on “Hangman” Adam Page in a Texas Deathmatch with the identical losing stipulation applied to Page.
So every little thing he did and will achieve with AEW was limited inside months of its existence, and he was effectively banned from the principal event picture.
Hindsight is 20-20, that much is true, but that does feel like a sore waste of the person who would eventually switch gears and grow to be the face of contemporary wrestling with WWE.
It also opens up an avenue for thought; what might have been if Rhodes hadn’t lost against Jericho that night?
Cody Rhodes as AEW World Champion
Probably the most obvious end result of this hypothetical scenario where-in Cody Rhodes has not lost his one and only shot on the AEW World Championship can be him becoming World Champion. Thus spurring a wholly latest set of wierd and unpredictable timelines within the multiverse.
Jericho would go on to defeat Rhodes and proceed to be the World Champion until Jon Moxley dethroned him the next 12 months, and Moxley would then go on to carry the title until Kenny Omega captured it in a fan-less arena and have become a belt-collector, after which “Hangman” Adam Page finally accomplished his story and beat Omega for the title.
Rhodes was gone just a few months away from Page dropping the title to CM Punk, a person he now shares the WrestleMania principal event picture with. Point being, what does him holding the title, only once on the very least, do to the canon of AEW and WWE altogether?
Rhodes lost his likelihood on the title and he went on to feud with the likes of MJF, Brodie Lee, Sammy Guevara, Malakai Black, and Andrade. His role was the gatekeeper for the principal event, but one would expect that to have modified significantly if he were to have won the World title.
Hindsight is 20-20 but his title reign could have gotten began with the MJF feud, cementing MJF as the highest heel of the corporate almost immediately. He and Kenny Omega could have revisited their transient feud as a part of the Bullet Club civil war.
He could have been the ultimate mountain for Page to beat, or he could have even been in his corner for that specific title feud.
However the principal thing this could have done is made Rhodes the undeniable face of the corporate – which proved to be something he wanted, a lot so he would depart.
Rhodes stays with AEW
It is difficult to assume a universe where Rhodes is just not now a three-time WWE Champion, having been the one to beat Roman Reigns, John Cena, and Brock Lesnar throughout his run and clearly checked out just like the top guy; he’s heading into his fourth WrestleMania principal event in a row, winning titles on TV to cement that because the case. He’s about as Hulk Hogan as one could get in 2026.
But that might also undermine how shocking his move from AEW to WWE originally was. For much of the time he had been presented much in the identical way Paul “Triple H” Levesque had been for WWE, speaking as a suit in media calls and leading the corporate seemingly be example.
It does often beg the query whether becoming AEW World Champion and stripping away that one significant constraint would have modified what transpired along with his profession as time went on.
Does a proven principal eventer/face of the corporate in Rhodes select to depart AEW in 2022 like he did in real life? Perhaps not. It isn’t as if it can ever be known either way, and likewise the argument could possibly be made that him winning the World title and leaving anyway might need on the detriment of the corporate. But that in itself is the character of considering what might have been.
The choice to rule Rhodes out of AEW’s principal event picture is one which may have spelled the tip of his run with the corporate he co-founded.
And if there had been that call made to make him the highest guy as an alternative, perhaps each AEW and WWE’s principal event pictures look quite a bit more different.