Cody Rhodes on Almost Getting into Backstage Fight with Seth Rollins in WWE, Rollins Responds

A recent episode of the Dan LeBatard Show podcast had Cody Rhodes as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Rhodes revealing that he almost got into a backstage fight with Seth Rollins at one point during his time back in WWE.

“I almost would say that I like less people than I dislike in terms of the backstage setting. The competition that exists in wrestling, you see that suspension of disbelief on-screen, but backstage it is very real in terms of the competition, who is going to be on top. For example, who is going to headline WrestleMania. This year, being Roman Reigns and myself, it doesn’t garner a lot of friends. Seth Rollins is the closest I’ve ever had to backstage turning into a fist fight in front of all of our peers and upper management. It didn’t happen. Him and I absolutely can’t stand one another, I’d probably try and rip his eyes out.

I’ve had one backstage skirmish. I’m not going to name the guy. The good thing is, I won. When I came back, this is early in my career, he was wearing one of my vests. I have these special leather vests that I wore as part of my entrance. He was wearing it and kind of mocking me at the talent viewing position. As I went walking towards him, I thought I was going to headbutt him, but a headbutt seems pretty violent these days. I thought, ‘why don’t I just grapple him?’ I have a good folkstyle Greco background. I got an over-under and swept him to the floor. Then I took my jacket and I looked like a complete jerk in front of everybody because he was probably just having a good time and it was probably funny. Only one fight backstage and I won that fight.”

In a recent interview with ESPN, Rollins gave his thoughts about almost getting into a fight with Rhodes backstage.

“I can’t get into so many details on that. There is a level of truth to that. The bottom line is, I feel, based on my body of work and what I’ve contributed to this company over the course of this last decade; I should be in that position. I’m the one who has held it down while he drifted off and went and did his own thing, respect to him, great. He drifted off and did his own thing. I’m the one who held it down. Whenever everybody got hurt or did something else or went off or took part-time schedules or wanted to do less and ask for more or wanted to go somewhere else because they weren’t happy — you don’t think there has been plenty of times where I haven’t been happy or plenty of times where I haven’t felt like I’ve been on the short end of the stick? There are a ton of stories I could tell about that, but I don’t, I keep it to myself. I put my head down, I work hard, I vouch for this company. I feel like, what he’s getting..I’m just not entirely comfortable with it. That just creates some natural friction between the two of us. When tempers flare, tempers flare. There is a little truth to that, but I can’t get into too many details. There is some level of mutual respect, there has to be in this industry, but at the same time, there is animosity as well.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1 & 2