Cody Rhodes Calls Out AEW Social Media Account Over Chairshot To The Head Comments

By Joshua Gagnon

Cody Rhodes appeared on the latest AEW Unrestricted where he discussed taking a chairshot to the head at last year's AEW Fyter Fest. Cody went into detail about how the chair was "gimmicked," how he wanted Shawn Spears to swing it, and what caused a cut to the back of his head that required ten staples. "The American Nightmare" was hoping to show other wrestlers a chairshot to the head could be done safely, but plans didn't quite work out that way.

AEW's social media helped plug the appearance with the following headline:

"Steel chair shots to the head can be done safely! 'The American Nightmare' @CodyRhodes explains on a new episode of #AEWUnrestricted."

Not quite hitting the mark with his comments on the podcast, Cody retweeted and clarified that it was very much a prop chair used in the segment.

"Woof — this headline, ha. Swing and a miss. For clarity: we are talking about a prop chair," Cody responded.

Below are Cody's comments about the chairshot from his appearance on AEW Unrestricted which we posted earlier:

"The plan was Charlie Roman [AEW props department] was going to sand the seat of the chair so that it was a cookie sheet," Cody began. "A cookie sheet can't hurt anybody. It sounds like it does. It's not unlike why we hit each other with the trash can lid. He was going to sand the seat of the chair, and then again, 'Swing for the fences.' So I wanted to see it, and I, being very organized, I said, 'Well, I want two of them' because what if we decide to do one in the middle of the day? To test it, I want to have two of them, and then you mark them with a piece of tape and you leave them in my office.

"The night before walking to that Oceanfront Center or whatever it's called there in Daytona, Tony Khan is adamant that Charlie hits him with the chair, and I was adamant that he is not hitting you with the chair. You're not taking a headshot. 'No, if you're going to take that shot, I want to take that headshot.' I really appreciate it, but we're sanding this thing down, and we can't dent it. Perhaps we should have. I still would never want Tony to take this, but he even was banging it against his own head, like 'See it's nothing,' and he kept banging.

"He's an energetic individual, but what I told them, I said, 'If we get a lot of heat right out of the gate, optics wise, say to whatever sources you want to, however you want to distill this information, tell them it was a gimmicked chair.' So that in the fiction, in the actual product and what we're doing, we're not addressing it but off the record, he is addressing it. So really, no one can get mad. That was the plan. Should have coordinated the plan with everybody. That would include Matt and Nick Jackson, who I left out in the wilderness on this. Kenny [Omega], who I don't think I said a word to about this. So that's where the term 'gimmicked chair' came from.

"In the end, he did sand the chair down, it was sheet metal [and] it was beautiful. It's just my advice to Ronnie to swing from the side is what created — he swung for the fences, but the back bar, the top bar is what ate the back of my head. So I knew it went bad, but I was like, 'Man, it was a great moment. It was a great moment.' I didn't have a concussion. Brandi doesn't like when I do violent things, but I'm a weird, violent wrestler. I like to get hit in the face. It's a weird thing. She don't like that.

"So she's yelling at me but not yelling at me, being a good wife, but in my mind, I was like, 'Nah, moment was cool. That was a cool moment.' And then they went on that scrum that night, Matt and Nick, and they're saying, 'it was gimmicked.' And then Tony said, 'it was pilot error,' and then it just became this whole, just big thing. And then, 'We're never going to do chair shots to the head again,' and my attempt to get chair shots to the head back for the boys, but safely, was a failed attempt. In hindsight, maybe it should have never been attempted because the optics of hitting someone in the head with a chair are still the same.

"Whether it's our fault for what Mankind and Ken Shamrock and all those guys did, people still look at it that way. So I didn't think of that, and that was a big lesson for me. Would I do it again? Yeah. I would because it led to a fun PPV, and Spears has never really had the moment I think he deserves. He had Tully Blanchard. He had that moment. I thought it was the right moment, and it's what he deserved as somebody who helped train me early on in my career and was really patient with me. The chair, we have one at the Nightmare Factory. We have the other one. So you never know. It's available. You can't swing it sideways as Moxley just kept, 'you got to swing it swing it overhead.' But chairs to the head, I don't see us doing it again."

Jason Ounpraseuth contributed to this article.

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