10 Most Mind-Blowing Wrestling Secrets Of 2023
Wrestlers controversially switching sides, shoot fights and and the shocking return of a dead brand.
We're a long way removed from the era of all wrestling being shrouded in secrecy, but there's a good chance you wouldn't be on this site without the thirst for backstage nuggets of news, "rumour and innuendo" and scuttlebutt still being forever unquenchable.
There's a great chance the writers here - your current one included - wouldn't have found places just like this one decades ago without the first wrestling newsletters, such was the interest in everything that went on behind the curtain and/or with the cameras well and truly off. The secrets are less salacious than they once might have been, but the facts behind the fiction remain just as intoxicating.
WWE's business has boomed in 2023, and while AEW's domestic success has sagged compared to transcendent terms between 2019 and 2022, one of the biggest shows in industry history at Wembley Stadium suggests that interest in the industry could be at an all-time high.
The market leader and the challenger brand are in good health heading into 2024, but what went on below the radar in the 12 months leading up to one of the business' biggest-ever years?
10. Cody Rhodes Lets A LITTLE More Out On His AEW Exit
The Cody Rhodes documentary "American Nightmare" was - like most things Cody Rhodes in WWE - a stunning over-delivery even if expectations had been set quite high.
Though peppered with all the usual bells and whistles one expects from an extended in-house special, a fascinating tale of career highs and lows was made all the more unique thanks to the specific journey Rhodes had been on between the market leader, the indies and All Elite Wrestling.
Rather than being an elephant in the room, Rhodes' exit from AEW was summarised amicably, but for the first time ever he did let slip a little more about one of the most shocking switches in recent history. At the time, he'd tweeted; "I have loved my time at AEW. Amazing locker room. Amazing fans. Amazing people. The 'revolution' was indeed televised, and I've been incredibly lucky to be part of that" and just about left it there.
In the documentary, he added; "I can't tell you why I left AEW, I can't and I won't. But I can tell you the reasons that were said – that didn't actually matter. I didn't leave AEW because of money and I didn't leave AEW because of other talents. I left AEW because of a personal issue. That's it. The byproduct of leaving AEW is the opportunity to go for the biggest dream I ever had and the first dream I had in my life."
Naturally, that resulted in more speculation, which is perhaps why what isn't known about the story remains so intriguing.