WWE star Cody Rhodes gets real about how becoming a father has changed his outlook on work and career.
Rhodes, 39, spoke exclusively to PEOPLE while attending a Monday Night Raw event in Los Angeles on Monday, January 6. During the conversation, Rhodes – who shares daughter Liberty Iris, 3, with wife and retired wrestler Brandi Rhodes – said fatherhood has “changed everything” and revealed that he finds wrestling to be an inherently “selfish” career.
“So wrestling is selfish, you have to get to the top and you want to be number one,” Cody says. “And for so long – I even said this [pro wrestler] Kevin Owens last week in the ring — I wanted that for myself.”
“To some extent, maybe I wanted that for my dad a little bit. I wanted that for him,” he adds. “Having a daughter right out of the gate, all that went away. It wasn’t about where I was. It was more about the life I could give her.”
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“You have to really search your soul, like, how much do you really mean?” the two-time Intercontinental Championship winner says. “And I felt like, no, that’s really it. I just want him to have the best life.”
Cody – whose father, Dusty Rhodes, was also a successful professional wrestler – noted that he wants to give his daughter everything he had growing up and more.
“Professional wrestling gave me the best life. I want to give her an even, you know, even more special — another level of it,” Cody explains. “And she changed everything for me. You have to go home and report to a three and a half year old who doesn’t care if you just wrestled in front of 80,000 people. She cares if you make funny noises and if there’s ice cream, you know? So he changed everything for me in the best way.”
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The wrestling superstar also admitted that he now feels like adoring thousands of anonymous fans at an event would be “holier” if he didn’t have his biggest fan — his daughter — waiting for him at home.
“That’s it [the] number one priority for me … being a father and being a husband, and that’s actually helped me in my career, so I’m very happy about that.”
The WrestleMania 40 champion shared that while he is a relatively quiet person, he has embraced the public nature of his chosen profession.
“My life has never been private,” he says. “My dad was into this, and I’m into that, and our life has always been very public.”
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However, Rhodes also said that sometimes he wants the public to understand that he is “actually very closed off and reserved.”
“I feel like if you meet me at the airport at 3 in the morning, I’m always going to sign, I’m always going to take a picture. But I’m just kind of a grumpy, grumpy little guy,” he says. “I wish people would understand that I’m not as friendly as my brother [wrestler Dustin Rhodes] … is the best way to put it. All these guys here [in the WWE] are like, ‘Oh, your brother is so great.’ I say, ‘Yeah, he’s nice. I’m the bad one.’ ”
Monday Night Raw airs live every Monday on Netflix at 8:00 PM ET.
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Source: HIS Education