Cody Rhodes Reacts To John Cena Saying They 'Stunk Up The Joint' At WWE WrestleMania 41

Cody Rhodes has reacted to John Cena saying they "stunk up the joint" with their main event match at WWE WrestleMania 41, admitting his heart has been pulled in multiple directions over the comment, especially after Cena put over Cody as being WWE's QB1 better than he ever was on Monday Night Raw earlier this month.

After being asked about Cena putting him over on ESPN's Unsportsmanlike, Cody stated:

"It got me. It got me. Then he said something else this week that we stunk the joint out in Vegas at WrestleMania 41, so my heart is pulled. He always, you know what I mean? I felt great, he got me. I had tears in my eyes standing there in Brooklyn with him. The next thing you know, okay, we stunk the joint out. That's what they do, though. That's what the great mentors do."

John Cena expressed his opinion that their WrestleMania 41 match "stunk up the joint" while speaking to Uncrowned about the upcoming John Cena Classic.

"I think it's a great template for when I talk to young talent — and I try to do this all the time, I remind them to swing big and don't be afraid to fail. A lot of them think I'm talking from a glass house of like, 'Yeah, sure, it must be easy for you, because you, you never fail.' And then I'll look back, especially on that last year because the retirement tour did have a lot of eyes, and I'll say I took a big swing at WrestleMania and we stunk up the joint. We failed. But what did I do? I got back up, we dusted ourselves off, course-corrected the ship, and we culminated with a fantastic finishing of the story, as Cody would put it, at SummerSlam," Cena said.

John Cena vs. Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 41 is widely considered one of the worst main events in WrestleMania history, and we at Cultaholic have actually ranked it as the worst main event ever to take place at WrestleMania.

The match was John Cena's first since turning heel at Elimination Chamber and he was deep into his "ruin wrestling" gimmick which resulted in the in-ring action being a complete slog as it consisted primarily of Cena slowly and boringly working over Rhodes in a match that never got out of second gear.

The final minutes were then full of storyline holes beginning with rapper Travis Scott taking two minutes to get to the ring before Cena proceeded to hold Rhodes up for Scott to punch in full view of the referee, something that would have resulted in a disqualification loss for Cena. Rhodes, for some reason, decided to fight out of the punch attempt and, following a ref bump and a Cross Rhodes to Travis Scott, was given the opportunity to hit Cena with the WWE Title belt. Despite vowing just two months earlier to do whatever it would take to remain WWE Champion and Cena even trying to use the belt against Cody seconds earlier, Rhodes couldn't bring himself to use the title as a weapon, so Cena kicked him in the nether regions, hit him with the belt, and pinned him to become a 17-time world champion.

Travis Scott was never seen again on WWE TV following WrestleMania 41 but Cody Rhodes and John Cena redeemed themselves with an excellent rematch at SummerSlam 2025 which saw Cena drop the WWE Championship back to Rhodes.