RADICAN’S TAKE: Cody Rhodes revealed too much during his interview with Simone Johnson (Ava in NXT)

It has been a quiet year when it comes to surprising quotes from top WWE wrestlers for the most part. John Cena gave a lifetime of eye-popping quotes while hitting the interview circuit constantly during and after his farewell tour from WWE last year. Cody Rhodes unexpectedly stepped up to the plate and said some surprising things last week while interviewing The Rock’s daughter, Simone Johnson (formerly NXT GM Ava), on his What Do You Wanna Talk about? podcast.

Rhodes, while speaking with Simone, said that when The Rock asked for his soul during the initial build to his match against John Cena at WrestleMania 41, he had an idea where he would give his soul to her instead of The Rock and she would speak for him on TV. “When the Final Boss asked me for my soul, I thought, you know what would’ve been funny, is to relent and give my soul, but not to him,” said Rhodes. ”This is at a time when you were the NXT General Manager, to you. I thought, ‘That’s got legs. I’ll never say a word again. She’ll speak.’”

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During her interview with Rhodes, Johnson did not have hardly anything interesting to say, so it’s hard to gauge what Rhodes’s motivations were for revealing this terrible idea to the world. He could have been trying to prop her up and give her something interesting to talk about when saying he wanted to give her his soul or he could have simply been telling the truth and the time was right to tell that story with Johson being on as his guest.

Rhodes relaying that story did allow Simone to say that she thought they would have done a really good job with the angle together if it had made TV. Whatever Rhodes’s motivations were for telling the story, it was one of those stories that would have been better off to have been left untold.

The initial build to Cody Rhodes defending the WWE Undisputed Championship against John Cena with the involvement and then subsequent disappearance of The Rock from the build was handled poorly. Rhodes can be very introspective when talking about his shortcomings at times, but there was no good reason for him to relay this story publicly because it was hard to believe a worse idea existed than the angle that actually took place at the conclusion of The Elimination Chamber 2025 and how poorly it came across when Rock asked Cody for his soul to set up Cena’s heel turn.

Cody usually carries himself really well when conducting an interview or appearing as a guest for an interview. Hopefully in the future, he doesn’t reveal another story like this one, as it was a really bad idea all-around and worse than the angle that actually happened between him and The Rock at Elimination Chamber last year.

(Sean Radican has been Pro Wrestling Torch for over 23 years. He has covered the independents, ROH, and NJPW in-depth over the years in addition to also watching all the major promotions in the U.S. PWTorch VIP members get access to his weekly Radican Worldwide podcast looking at a variety of news topics from the past week and then an in-depth Go-Home segment with a guest on a big topic of the week. You can contact him at pwtorchsean@gmail.com. You can follow him on X @SR_Torch and on Bluesky @SeanRadican.)