During a recent appearance on the SI Media podcast, Cody Rhodes described what he went through emotionally after losing in the main event of WrestleMania.
On feeling “stuck” and dealing with every bit of the loss, processing it before he went back to see his family after that main event, Rhodes said:
“I feel you have moments in your career where you get stuck in them, whether they’re so good or whether they’re so low, that you get stuck in these moments. It’s not unlike if you have a traumatic experience in your personal life. For me, I felt, and I still do three months removed, very stuck. In that there was a very long period of time where I was sitting in the ring. I knew I was sitting in the ring and knew I had lost. I’m watching people not leave. They’re looking at me. They’re looking at me and they’re either frustrated, they’re sad for me, they’re mad at me. But you usually see at the end of the night some people heading for the aisles. They’re going to beat traffic, something. We were just stuck.
And I knew we were filming me. And the internal monologue I had when I saw my family at ringside, then I saw some of the most diehard fans fully decked out in every piece of merch for me they could have possibly bought, the internal monologue was really just telling myself to get up. And then I wanted to make a point that I was not going to walk what we call ‘loser lane.’ I’m going to walk all the way back up this 70-yard ramp and I want to feel every bit of this loss.”
Rhodes would go on to say that he didn’t want people to console him, saying he’d “already won” by being able to main event WrestleMania because, as the ‘American Nightmare’ explained:
“All I found out from main eventing a WrestleMania is I want to do it again and I have to win. Like it’s a sickness, you know? Like, you got this high and for it to go like that — I can’t accept it. I can’t allow it.”
Source: F4WOnline