10 Rare Backstage Moments Between Wrestling Couples
6. Brandi & Cody Rhodes
The most #AEW #WWE video ever.
— Michael Hamflett (@MichaelHamflett) January 29, 2020
Stardust speaking to Eden Stiles following his match with Jack Swagger that had interference from Goldust. He cuts a promo to set their match up, aspiring to kill the Attitude Era.
That Double Or Nothing build had been in the chamber for 4 years pic.twitter.com/pqrpcKu3sP
The DNA of All Elite Wrestling fills this scene between future husband and wife Stardust and Eden Stiles. And not just because it finds The Rhodes' in their prior WWE monikers pre-marriage and all that followed, but because of the content, delivery and even location of this largely forgotten promo.
Lamenting another bad night in the gimmick, Cody appears to cleverly blur the line between reality and kayfabe when matters turn to getting a measure of revenge on his older brother. He positions Goldust as part of a wider systemic issue within WWE, exactly as he did ahead of their bloodbath at Double Or Nothing 2019. A symbol of an era the company had held onto so tightly that they'd dropped everybody else instead.
"Old men walking, young men dying" wasn't a line out of the mouth of the malfunctioning alien knockoff of the 'Bizarre One' he was forced to play. It came from the soul of a performer that knew there was more beyond the corridors in which he stood.