Former WWE Superstar Cody Rhodes was interviewed by Aubrey Sitterson last week on a special edition of the Straight Shoot podcast. The nearly 2-hour interview covered a wise range of topics, including Evolve, Arrow, PWG’s BOLA and more

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– He just finished shooting his episode for the show arrow, which is one of the most exciting things he’s ever done. He couldn’t believe how well the actors were treated on set, including somebody tying his shoe for him in between scenes. Cody couldn’t give specifics about the episode, but if you were a fan of the SummerSlam match with Steven Amell and Stardust, you will love this. It was a very physical episode so he felt at home, even though he’s not an actor.

– He plans to wrestle for a long time and loves the business. Even if he got a great ongoing acting gig, most shows don’t shoot on the weekends and he’d still wrestle on independent shows. After being on the road for years, he’s adjusting fine to living in one place. He works out in the mornings, built a wrestling ring at his house and goes for a jog with his dog at nights. He’s getting back into gaming.

– Leaving WWE was the biggest professional decision he’s ever made and he had a lot of time to think about it. The tipping point for him came when RAW was in Greensboro, North Carolina and he was changing in the WWE.com room, which was the old dressing room from legendary events like Starrcade. He looked at his gear bag, he saw the Stardust body suit (which he always hated) and in that moment he felt like he was betraying himself.

– At the end of his run, he was completely done with the Stardust character. Whenever he was portraying Stardust, he enjoyed being in the moment and saw it as escapism. But from a career perspective, he was dying to be Cody Rhodes. He offered storyline suggestions of how they could end the character but WWE wasn’t interested. On the bright side, it allowed him to meet Drax Shadow, the young cancer patient who was a big WWE fan and was inspired by Stardust.

– It really rubbed him the wrong way when the NXT wrestlers were referred to as “Dusty’s Kids.” Cody said,

“When you’re calling the NXT talent Dusty’s Kids and his actual kid is working there, the last thing you want to do is dress up like a fucking space clown.”

– They talked about the many different phases of his career, starting of as Bob Holly’s lacky then moving on to working with Ted DiBiase and Legacy, Damien Sandow, etc. Cody said WWE may have done guys like him and Ted DiBiase a disservice by debuting them so early. He said he was clearly not ready to make his WWE debut when they brought him in. He was unpolished and looked like a default ‘Create a Wrestler’ from a video game. He was very generic, didn’t know anything about working in the ring and feels it took a good 2 years before he belonged on television.

– He would frequently visit the WWE Performance Center and try different variations on his character. None of it was catching anybody’s attention in management. He was told twice that he would be winning Money in the Bank and both times on the day of, they told him they’re going in a different direction.

– Cody was asked about the longtime speculation that the McMahon family has a problem with the Rhodes family, dating back to the Virgil character being named after Dusty, Vince putting Dusty in polka dots, Goldust being given a freak gimmick and then WWE not getting the most out of Cody and turning him into a space clown. Did Vince hate/fear/resent Dusty? Cody said from his perspective, no, he dos not think Vince hates the Rhodes family. However, other people who are very close to Vince and were close to Dusty have told Cody that Vince never got over the WWF vs. Jim Crocket Promotions rivalry in the 80’s.

Cody never got the vibe that Vince didn’t like him due to him being Dusty’s son, but he feels that Vince won and should be over it. Cody acknowledged there is certainly a lot of evidence to support the idea that Vince holds animosity towards Dusty. However, WWE has also done a lot to honor Dusty after his passing, including the bronze statue and the NXT tag team cup being named after him. He acknowledged WWE has done a phenomenal job in honoring Dusty’s legacy.

– He spoke about the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic tournament in NXT. Cody was pretty sure that he and Goldust were offered a spot in the tournament, but he could never wrestle in a tournament honoring Dusty as Stardust. At one point, a WWE writer “who shouldn’t even work there” asked Cody if he wanted to start a feud with Finn Balor by smashing the winners’ trophy over Balor’s head. He had never felt more disrespected.

– Cody does not watch the current WWE product. WWE Superstars are given free access to the WWE Network. After Cody was released, one of the first things WWE did was revoke his Network credentials. He now uses Cesaro’s account. He watches some wrestling, but not WWE. He’s got a bunch of matches coming up and he studies tapes of his opponents.