WWE Star Cody Rhodes Talks Living In The Shadow Of His Late Father

"The American Nightmare" Cody Rhodes is living in the shadows of a fading past, such is the life of a second-generation wrestler. In a recent interview with GQ, the former AEW TNT Champion turned to a parable from his own life to explain how it feels to try and walk in Dusty Rhodes's footprints. Rhodes remembers being at bat at the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs, and Rhodes struck out, costing his team the game.

"I was devastated," Rhodes said. "You feel like your life is coming to an end." According to Rhodes, his father made it clear to him that –despite Cody's disappointment in himself– what mattered was that Cody gave everything he had in the high-tension situation.

"It's insurmountable if you think about the legacy that someone like a Dusty Rhodes or a Ric Flair or The Rock leave behind," Rhodes continued. "However, you've still got to go out and commit."

Rhodes says that he assumed that people would eventually disassociate him from his father, but has found the opposite true, as he finds his father's proverbial fingerprints on every blade of grass and in every grain of sand, noting that NXT just ran his father's Great American Bash concept, and also mentioning that Survivor Series has included the War Games match that Dusty invented. Cody says that the omnipresent specter of his father motivates him to be even better.

"I responded to his shadow and his presence with wanting to be better," Rhodes explained, "and he liked and encouraged that."