Dustin Rhodes on How WWE Told Him Match With Cody Rhodes Wasn’t Good Enough for WrestleMania, Finding His Passion Again

– Inside The Ropes released a new video of a chat with Dustin Rhodes from a panel at Starrcast II that took place after the AEW Double or Nothing event. Below are some highlights and a video of the chat.

Rhodes on why he needed to leave WWE: “Probably for the last four years, a lot of people hate their jobs. And a lot of people love their jobs, and I love pro wrestling. Pro wrestling is my first love. And for the past four years with WWE, it just — I kind of lost my passion because let’s face it, you’re sitting in the back, you’re not doing anything, and it’s just really hard. It’s frustrating when you have so much to give, but time is running out because you’re getting older. It sucks when you’re not being picked, and you’re pitching these ideas to the writers and the creative and to Vince [McMahon] and to whoever else will listen and nothing happens. And it’s, ‘We’ll just put you in a backstage segment, standing in the hall while Goldberg makes his f***ing entrance.’ OK, thanks. I appreciate that, but no thanks. I’d rather be doing something with substance on the show with a storyline. Whether I deserved it or not, I don’t know, but that’s what I wanted. That’s what I desired. That’s where my passion was and I lost it along the way, and I wanted out. It was hard to get out. It’s like — if anybody has seen the movie Papillon — it’s like prison. It really is. It’s one of the prisons that they take good care of you in, but I needed to go kind of do something else because I had been there for so long. They had taken good care of me but I needed to get out, breathe, and find my passion again.”

Rhodes on wanting to do other things: “There’s other things that I want to do in life before it just ends because you never know. We take every day for granted. Tomorrow might not ever happen. There’s acting I want to do. There’s other things. There’s teaching, opening a wrestling school. There’s all kinds of things in my mind that I’m just constantly creating every single day, and to actually get out to and to say, ‘This is my last day with the company,’ and for it to be done where I can actually speak about it, it was a breath of fresh air.”

Dustin Rhodes on going to AEW: “This [AEW] fell into my lap, AEW, with my brother [Cody Rhodes] because — let me tell you something, man — when you push for something for so hard, for so, so long, and they look you dead in the eye and they tell you, ‘that’s not good enough to be on the big show.’ It f***ing pissed me off. It pissed me off because I knew in my heart of hearts that they were wrong, and I proved that last night [at Double or Nothing] when finally after years and years of wanting it, you get that opportunity, and I found my passion again.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit Inside the Ropes, with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.