Cody Rhodes’ Wild Idea For Angle Involving The Rock’s Daughter That Never Happened

Cody Rhodes has revealed there was once a very different plan for his soul storyline with The Rock , one that would have involved his daughter, Ava, instead of Dwayne Johnson himself.

Speaking on his podcast, " What Do You Wanna Talk About?" , Rhodes explained that when The Rock demanded his soul during their 2025 on-screen rivalry, he briefly considered redirecting the entire angle toward Ava, who was serving as NXT General Manager at the time.

"When the Final Boss asked me for my soul, I thought, what would've been funny, is to relent and give my soul, but not to him. This is at a time when you were the NXT General Manager, to you. I thought, 'That's got legs. I'll never say a word again. She'll speak,'" Rhodes said.

Ava responded to the pitch with immediate enthusiasm, agreeing the concept had real potential if it had made it to television that year.

"I think we would've crushed that," she said.

Rhodes echoed the sentiment, noting he has no reservations about playing a villain if the story calls for it.

"We would've crushed that. People are often like, 'You don't want to be a bad guy.' I'm open to all things. Whatever is the best. I thought that would've been a real good spin," Rhodes said.

"I would've loved to have done that," Ava added.

The conversation turned to how Johnson himself would have reacted to being cut out of the payoff after driving the 2025 storyline forward. Rhodes asked Ava directly, and she said she believed he would have supported the swap.

"I think he would've been all for it. Absolutely," Ava said.

Rhodes admitted he was surprised the idea had never come up between Ava and Johnson.

"I can't believe you never told him," Rhodes said.

Ava explained the timing never lined up for that conversation, since she had no advance knowledge of Johnson's involvement before it aired.

"I don't think it ever came up because I think he was beating you up, asking you for your soul. I don't think I knew he was coming back that day. I had no context of what the promo would be. I just saw it and was like, 'Soul is crazy,'" Ava said.

Rhodes closed out the discussion by suggesting the concept isn't necessarily dead, even though the moment for it has technically passed.

"I think we might have had something. Who knows, we might still have something. I thought it was such a fun spin. My soul goes to you and we would've wreaked havoc. Sold out every night. That was our idea. It never happened," Rhodes said.

Ava left the door open for a future version of the storyline.

"Who knows, maybe it could still happen. Never say never," she said.

Opinion: This Idea Would Have Wrecked The Real 2025 Plan

As fun as the pitch sounds in hindsight, redirecting the soul angle to Ava would have almost certainly derailed the actual plan WWE was building toward in 2025: John Cena's heel turn. The entire point of The Rock inserting himself into the Cody Rhodes story was to set up Cena's alliance with him and the heel run that followed, culminating in Cena taking the title off Rhodes at WrestleMania 41 with Rock's help. That storyline only works if The Rock is positioned as the direct threat holding something over Rhodes. Handing the soul off to Ava instead removes Rock from the center of the conflict at the exact moment WWE needed him there to justify Cena's turn.

There's also a practical problem with the pitch that Rhodes and Ava didn't address: Ava was NXT General Manager, not a main roster act, and pulling her into a top-of-the-card story with Rhodes and Johnson would have meant either promoting her creative role dramatically overnight or awkwardly writing around her NXT duties. Neither option serves the Cena payoff, and both would have added complications to a storyline that was already carrying a lot of moving pieces heading into WrestleMania season.

None of this means the idea was bad in a vacuum. It's a clever swerve, and it clearly would have given Ava a bigger spotlight than she got in 2025. But WWE picked the version of the story that led to Cena's heel turn for a reason, and that version needed Johnson, not Ava, standing across from Rhodes.