Pro wrestling veteran and former AEW Star “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes, who is one of the key persons responsible for the formation of All Elite Wrestling and who’s one of the first few to sign a contract with the company when it was established on January 1, 2019, worked in the company as a free agent for a number of weeks once his contract expired at the end of 2021 and before he decided to not re-sign with the promotion and part ways.
The American Nightmare was then rumored to be making his way to the WWE for several weeks prior to it actually happening at WWE’s WrestleMania 38 Night One Event this past Saturday night, when he battled top WWE Star Seth “Freakin” Rollins in Singles action and walked out of the match with a big victory. AEW President and CEO Tony Khan recently spoke with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated on a number of topics, including Cody Rhodes returning to the WWE and how he did lose a very prominent free agent in The American Nightmare, but his focus right now is the other big stars who recently made their AEW debuts such as Samoa Joe, Toni Storm and Jeff Hardy.
This is what Tony Khan said:
“I did lose a very prominent free agent.” “But we’re debuting one [on Wednesday’s Dynamite] in Samoa Joe. In the past 30 days, we’ve also debuted Toni Storm, who was incredible last week in her win against The Bunny, and Jeff Hardy, one of the biggest stars in wrestling. We have a lot of excitement happening here, and that’s our focus.”
The American Nightmare Spoke with Variety shortly following his return at WrestleMania 38 and said he chooses to remain silent about his departure from AEW and he is going to keep his word on that and it was all about a personal matter that they couldn’t move past, but he has nothing but respect for Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson and Kenny Omega and he is rooting for Tony Khan and he knows Tony Khan is going to be in the history books.
