15 Greatest Promos In Modern Wrestling History
13. Cody Rhodes Returns To WWE
Cody's WWE return promo was a masterpiece - primarily because saying something that even vaguely made sense was thought to be very difficult.
That's because Cody Rhodes leaving AEW was thought to be impossible. In 2019, with a candid, gregarious wit and everything to prove, he put himself forward as the face of the challenger brand, which of course meant challenging (and mocking) WWE. He buried WWE's invisible wall, its lack of creative freedom, its unwillingness to let go of the Attitude Era, its insistence on changing everybody's name, virtually everything. He played the role brilliantly - the AEW hardcore audience is defensively anti-WWE to this day - so how could he come out on the Raw after WrestleMania 38 and say, "Can I shock you? I like WWE. Despite what I said earlier". How could he make sense of something so surreal?
Cody, knowing what draws money, made it personal. He avoided the tribal rhetoric altogether by revealing that he had returned to finish the story that his father, Dusty Rhodes, had started. This didn't make a tremendous amount of sense, in that Dusty was never close to actually winning the WWWF title - but the "story" was told through the eyes of an adoring child, not a record-keeper. Also: it didn't matter. The WWE fans bought it, and Cody can summon conviction about anything. That's his genius.
It was true, too. Cody didn't originally leave WWE in 2016 to form a competitor on a major arena scale - that was considered impossible - he left with the idea of one day returning as a superstar capable of winning the big one.
This promo was so effective that the idea of Cody not finishing the story was a hugely controversial disgrace.