The Night 8-Year-Old Cody Rhodes Knew

Cody Rhodes is the current WWE champion walking into another WrestleMania main event, but the story that reveals who he really is happened when he was eight years old at a show in Chattanooga.

He was backstage at UTC when he heard the crowd lose its mind. He had to see what was happening. He walked out and saw Brad Armstrong, another multi-generational wrestler, doing the most basic move in the business. An arm drag. Hook the other guy's arm. Nothing fancy. But the Bible Belt crowd reacted like something sacred had just happened. That is the moment Cody got hooked.

His father, Dusty Rhodes, was a legend working behind the scenes as booker and producer at that point. Cody never cared about the production side. He wanted to be out front. He wore an oversized laminate backstage pass and hunted for empty seats at every show. He heard wrestling before he saw it.

Dream's in-ring career had already passed by the time Cody was old enough to understand what his father had done. The moment of realization came in a Blockbuster, in the wrestling section. There was Dusty on the cover, bleeding, face-to-face with Ric Flair through cage bars. Cody had grown up watching Sting, Brad Armstrong, and Stunning Steve Austin long before he became Stone Cold. Finding out his dad was part of that same world was a trippy experience.

He was probably eight at the Chattanooga show. At one show around that time, he got so excited he fell down the steps and busted his eye open. Ricky Steamboat, Ricky the Dragon, patched him up with a band-aid while still in his gear, treating him like one of the boys. Cody then had to explain the black eye to his mom.

His dad did not try to smarten him up to the business, but there were moments the curtain lifted on its own. Big Boss Man showed up to a family barbecue and spun the police-issue nightstick in the backyard. In character. The Four Horsemen came to Thanksgiving dinners in Charlotte, the same guys who played Dusty's sworn enemies on television.

The Big Fish moment, he says, was his father's funeral. He looked out from the podium and the room looked like a comic book. Hogan with the shades and the bandana. One of the Giants. Everyone seemed to still be in gimmick. Everything came together in a circus-like, unique way.

He is the first Rhodes to hold the WWE title. Randy Orton, his WrestleMania opponent, is another multi-generational wrestler whose father Cowboy Bob was in the cast of the original WrestleMania. Whether fans see wrestling as real or as entertainment, Cody says this one is as real as it gets.

The bloodline says the same thing.