Rhodes chats matches from her in-ring career.
From 2016-2022, Brandi Rhodes was an active in-ring performer. She’s stated on several occasions that her plan was to stop wrestling when she hit the age of 40.
Some of the matches from Rhodes’ career were discussed while she was being interviewed by D.S. Shin of Ring The Belle. A mixed tag team match that she had in IMPACT Wrestling was brought up. Brandi teamed with Cody Rhodes to take on Mike Bennett and Maria Kanellis.
Brandi feels the match was terrible and said it’s on her because she was not ready. She would go on to add that she’d come out of retirement ‘in a heartbeat’ for a mixed tag against Stephanie McMahon and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque.
Let me be honest with you, that’s a terrible match (Cody & Brandi Rhodes versus Mike Bennett & Maria Kanellis in IMPACT) and it’s not on anybody other than me. I was brand new, Maria was great. I really like Maria Kanellis. She was wonderful with me. I wasn’t ready. So, I kind of chose to do it all on TV. Some people wait a little bit longer, whatever, but I wasn’t ready yet.
Stephanie (McMahon) and Triple H (would be the dream mixed tag match that I’d want). 100 percent. I would come out of retirement for that in a heartbeat and I would do it at 72 years old. Y’all would have to sit through that and just let it happen. I know it wouldn’t be great, but just let it happen, if it does because I mean, the chances of it happening are very, very slim. If that was on the table, you’d have grandma in the gym. I’d be doing everything I possibly could. I’d be getting into full lotus in my yoga studio just to stretch Stephanie a little bit.
In 2018, Brandi went on a tour with STARDOM in Japan. She competed in the promotion’s Cinderella tournament. During that tour, Rhodes shared the ring with IYO SKY, AZM, Blair Davenport, Momo Watanabe, Jungle Kyona and the late Hana Kimura.
As the tour went on, Rhodes suffered a broken collarbone. She clarified that the injury happened while match planning and it was simply a miscommunication.
STARDOM was an excellent, excellent thing. I was so excited to be able to go over and do that, I loved working with IYO (SKY). The ultimate challenge, most people don’t speak much English over there so it was trying to plan these matches when you don’t speak English. Unfortunately, I got injured there and that was 100 percent what happened and some people think that it was in the IYO SKY match. It was not. I was not injured by IYO, not at all. We had a great match and I really enjoyed working with her. It was fantastic and the match that I had before that, everything was fantastic. Where I got injured was in match planning, before the next match that we were going to have and it was a complete accident, it was a miscue in translation on direction so I was saying, ‘This person has to go to the right.’ They told them left. They went left, I went right, my collarbone snapped. So complete accident. No one did anything harmful or on purpose. The girl felt terrible and you know, it was what it was.
In the summer of 2022, Rhodes worked out at the WWE Performance Center for a few weeks and had practice matches. To read her recount of that experience, click here.
The aforementioned IYO SKY defended her WWE Women’s Championship against Asuka on the 9/22 SmackDown. A review of that match and show can be found on the POST Wrestling site.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Ring The Belle with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
