00:00 A peroxide blonde figure in wrestling, changing companies and hoping that people still like him
00:04 as much as he thinks people do, although there's a nagging thought in the back of his mind that
00:07 people absolutely don't. That gimmick will never work. Anyway, completely unrelated to that last
00:12 statement, Cody Rhodes has left AEW, the company that he helped to create, the first viable
00:16 competition to WWE in decades, and it's all but certain that not only will he be returning to
00:20 the heaven from which he fell, but he's also going to be in a major program at WrestleMania.
00:24 Life is weird, huh? Regardless of all the backstage rumours that are tying us all in
00:27 knots and whatever the young bucks put in their Twitter bio, Cody has done some phenomenal work
00:31 in AEW, haters be damned. As we embark on the "Rhodes to WrestleMania" - Oli insists I credit
00:37 him for that joke - let's mark one chapter of the American Nightmare's career closing,
00:41 but running down some of Cody's greatest AEW memories, because shut up, you mean people,
00:45 there are loads. Cody loads. I'm Adam Hailing from PartsFunknown, and here are our Top 10
00:50 Cody Rhodes Moments from AEW. Number 10. 10 Lashes. Cody Rhodes' rivalry with MJF was one of
00:56 the most engaging stories told during the early days of Dynamite, with Maxwell "Jacob" Friedman
01:01 executing the first great heel turn of the promotion's history and crowning himself
01:05 King Turd in the Punchbowl. To get MJF to fight him, Cody had to accept MJF's terms,
01:09 a trial of Hercules-style gauntlet, one of which was to receive 10 lashes from MJF himself. The
01:14 segment is actually difficult to watch, seeing Cody's back being covered in welts as MJF and
01:19 Wardlow really take their time and draw these 10 lashes out, heels unrelated to the rivalry came
01:24 out on stage just to watch Cody suffer while the Young Bucks told him he didn't have to do this.
01:29 One of the last times Cody would ever interact with the Elite on camera, and the whole thing
01:33 has a very Tommy Dreamer, Sandman, ECW vibe to it. The pretty babyface taking these shots,
01:38 but standing triumphantly after the heel is given his best. Talk about a stark contrast
01:43 to the revival shaving each other's backs in the shower over on the other channel.
01:46 Number 9. Cody Rhodes vs. Wardlow. Sticking with the MJF feud, another of the American Nightmare's
01:51 trials saw him step inside a steel cage with Wardlow, MJF's giant man pet. The first cage
01:56 match in AEW history, and Wardlow's first match in the company, again a lot could go wrong,
02:01 but Cody led the way through a simple, yet effective match. After years of WWE's fairly
02:05 crap "escape the cage" rules, this match went back to NWA-style basics, locking the hero in a cage
02:10 with a monster and forcing him to take a big risk to slay the beast, and what a risk at that. Cody
02:15 scales this impossibly tall cage and hits a moonsault that probably should have cost him his
02:20 knees if not worse, taking out Wardlow and winning the match covered in blood. Cody standing on top
02:25 of the cage, crimson masked with finally nothing, standing between him and MJF is an unironically
02:30 heroic moment. Sure is a shame MJF beat him and Cody just sort of forgot about the whole thing,
02:34 but hey-ho, look at the moonsault again. Wee. Number 8. Cody cross-bodies Shaq. Feels surreal
02:40 to try and remember that. At the peak of pandemic wrestling, Cody Rhodes wrestled Papa John's Papa
02:45 John, Shaquille O'Neal on AEW Dynamite. Man, Big Show must have been just as sad as Panda watching
02:51 this, checking his phone and seeing his repeated requests for a Shaq match being left on read.
02:55 After months of trash talk between Rhodes, Shaq, Brandy, Red Velvet and Jade Cargill,
02:59 Cody and Red Velvet finally took on Shaq and Jade on the 3rd of March episode of Dynamite 2021. The
03:04 match was absolutely incredible, a good thing since this was Jade's first match and Shaq was
03:08 more well known for stuff, crust and athleticism at this point in his career, but this ended up
03:12 being one of the best celebrity wrestling matches ever, capped off by Cody cross-bodying Shaq off
03:16 the apron through a table as Jade got the win. I mean, who amongst you has gotten to put Shaquille
03:21 O'Neal through a table? Not me. Maybe Pete though. I think Pete has. Number 7. The flaming table.
03:26 That just... that just f***ing sucks, huh Cody? The poor lad would jump off anything or through
03:31 anything if it meant the fans would cheer him just once, and you people, you people wouldn't
03:36 even give him that, to be fair the neck tattoo is bad. On the December 1st 2021 episode of Dynamite,
03:41 Cody wrestled Andrade El Idolo in an Atlanta street fight, all things considered, this was a
03:46 very fun match, but then, oh no what are you doing Brandy? That's not how you set a table. Cody hits
03:50 an inverted suplex through a flaming table of all things, and Andrade goes through precisely dick of
03:56 that table, Cody taking the full bump. Most of the time, flaming table fight puts itself out pretty
04:01 quickly. It's a board covered in lighter fluid so the fluid should burn off quite quickly. Not this
04:05 time though, Cody lands and lies in a pile of flaming rubble, burning, literally burning as he
04:11 pins Andrade with his tights still on fire. It may not have gotten him cheered in the long term, but
04:15 gotta put some respect on the lad at least. Number six, Cody puts over new talent. It is hard to try
04:19 and narrow this down to just one moment, but it is worth pointing out that while a portion of the AEW
04:24 fan base became perhaps a little too obsessed with comparing Cody Rhodes to Triple H, you're not
04:28 really helping your case with that golden shovel though Cody. I don't really care that it's a meme.
04:31 However, while many accused Cody of burying new talent, more often than not the opposite was true.
04:36 Sure, Cody got many wins in AEW, but there are few who did the job to make someone else a star,
04:41 as many times like Cody did in AEW, whether it be MJF Revolution 2020,
04:44 Rody Lee in just minutes and one of the biggest shockers in Dynamite history, Darby Allin at
04:49 Full Gear 2021, Malakai Black also in just minutes, or Sammy Guevara in that ladder match that we'll
04:55 get to. Cody leaves behind a roster of guys who have benefited from beating him, mostly because
04:59 he beat so many people. Like that's how wrestling works, really. Number five, the TNT Open Challenge.
05:05 Boy, I do love a good Open Challenge. Single handedly turned John Cena's career around,
05:08 I don't care who agrees. Good matches were built in stakes and an ongoing story of the champion
05:13 getting worn down with each title defense only to finally be overcome when they run out of gas,
05:17 who could say no? Cody Rhodes was your inaugural TNT champion, if we're honest,
05:21 beating the relatively new Lance Archer could be seen as the start of his descent in the fans'
05:24 eyes, but then he started putting it on the line every week. He started with Jungle Boy and
05:27 proceeded to have really fun matches with Mark Quen, Jake Hager, Ricky Stark, Sonny Kiss, Eddie
05:32 Kingston, Warhorse, Scorpio Sky before finally losing in a legendary squash match against Brody
05:37 Lee. The Open Challenge didn't just benefit Cody either, with Starks and Kingston both earning
05:41 contracts from their performances against the grandson of a plumber. Number four, the Dog
05:44 Collar Match. This match holds a bittersweet place in many fans' hearts as this would end up being the
05:49 final match of the great Brody Lee's career, but did he ever make the most of this one? In response
05:54 to Brody capturing the TNT title from Cody, Cody returned weeks later with black hair looking an
05:58 awful lot like Robbie Rotten from LazyTown, challenging Brody to a Dog Collar match for
06:02 the title on the October 7th, 2020 episode of Dynamite. The match has the kind of old-school
06:07 Southern violence that AEW often really well mixes in with their high-speed technical wrestling,
06:12 lucha libre, and Japanese strong style. This was an old-fashioned fight with both men chained
06:17 together, bleeding together, and it was brilliant. Of all of Cody's title wins in AEW, this one was
06:21 by far the best match, and it holds an incredible amount of emotional weight and significance in
06:26 hindsight. Number three, Undesirable to Undeniable. While Cody Rhodes cut one or two great promos in
06:31 WWE, the "They Made My Father Dance" one being especially good, AEW is where he truly came into
06:37 his own on the stick. He cut a number of great promos during his time in AEW, but the best has
06:41 to be his go-home promo for Full Gear 2019. Setting up his AEW World Championship match
06:46 with Chris Jericho, Cody would announce that if he lost, he would never again challenge for the
06:50 title, a stipulation that may have handcuffed him narratively later on, but for the time,
06:54 these were big stakes, the kind that really sold AEW's early pay-per-views. He throws shade at
06:59 Jericho, saying you could buy his book for $3 on Amazon, but the real emotion comes when Cody says
07:03 this match isn't about his dad. It isn't about the dead. It's about the living. It's about his mother,
07:08 his sister, his wife, and the 14 years it took for him to go from undesirable to ungoddamn deniable.
07:14 Cody occasionally cut some weird, rambling promos in the house he helped build, but this promo
07:19 encapsulated everything about him that made him the face of the revolution at the time. Number two,
07:24 Cody Rhodes vs. Sammy Guevara. Holy s***, what a ladder match though. Cody Rhodes may have lost
07:29 that babyface shine he had early in his AEW run, but there is no denying that he elevated his in-ring
07:33 ability greatly during his time in the promotion, perfectly illustrated by what will come to be
07:38 known as his final match under the AEW flag for now. For his swan song, Cody put on one of the
07:43 best ladder matches ever with Sammy Guevara to determine the undisputed TNT Champion. Singles
07:49 ladder matches are very difficult to pull off because the time spent selling usually needs
07:53 to be cut dramatically to ensure the match doesn't grind to a halt. It's easier with multiple people
07:57 because you can just lay there after taking the best cutter off a ladder spot ever. Genuinely,
08:02 this spot almost out TLC2's TLC2. Cody and Sammy destroyed themselves for our entertainment,
08:08 sending Cody packing with an official five-star classic. And number one, Cody solves racism. Not
08:14 really. Number one, Cody vs. Dustin. And talk about blood-soaked Southern wrestling. For years,
08:21 the Rhodes Brothers wanted to wrestle a match at WrestleMania, and every other Royal Rumble
08:25 they would tease it only for the plug to be pulled. Hell, we got a bulls*** that finished
08:29 that singles match between Goldust and Stardust at Fastlane, and they still dropped the whole
08:33 thing before WrestleMania. Rude. On AEW's first pay-per-view, Cody and Dustin finally got to
08:39 wrestle a match they had always wanted to, putting on a five-star classic no less on AEW's first
08:44 show. Honoring their father in a match that still ranks highly amongst the best in AEW history.
08:49 Blood was spilled. A lot of blood was spilled, but many tears were shared not only from the men
08:54 in the ring, but from many of the people in the crowd who chanted Dusty as the son of a plumber's
08:58 two sons stole the show on one of the biggest nights in wrestling history. And that's our list.
09:04 What's your favorite Cody Rhodes moment from AEW? You do have one. You do. Let us know in the
09:09 comments. If you like this list, why not share it around the internet? Make sure you like and
09:12 subscribe to PartsFunknown for more silly wrestling content, and never forget to jam that jam.
09:17 [outro music]
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