Cody Rhodes Reacts to O'Shea Jackson Jr. Wearing His Robe

Cody Rhodes is officially a slash now. WWE superstar slash actor, back on The Rich Eisen Show with Street Fighter in theaters and doing big business, and he called it his "first slash interview."

Rich introduced him as a thespian. Rhodes took the bit and ran with it, then spent the next stretch proving he has the stories to back it up.

The kid who played the game

Rhodes flipped the first question around and asked Rich if he ever played Street Fighter. Rich said he wasn't very good at it and was "more of a Mike Tyson Punch-Out guy." Could he beat Tyson? Rich would only say he "definitely took care of Glass Joe."

Rhodes, meanwhile, used to play Street Fighter 2 Turbo, and there was a cabinet on set that everyone would play. The problem was that his old skills had apparently left the building.

"It's scary because it's like, what happened to my brain? Why am I not any good at this?" he said.

So what would that younger version of Rhodes think about landing in the movie? "It's still such a shocker," he said. "I played the game. I played the character. I went and saw the original Van Damme movie with my dad. Got trading cards." Getting cast as Guile, he said, is "a wild, lucky, pinch me, be careful what you wish for type moment."

Becoming Guile

That famous hair takes work. Rhodes said the team got it down to about an hour in the chair, a little longer when they were covering up his neck tattoo.

The production made a smart call. They kept him siloed away in the makeup trailer so most of the cast hadn't seen Guile in full until his first scene, walking down a hallway with Noah Centineo, who plays Ken, and Andrew Schulz, who plays Dan. "That's one of the first moments the full production saw it," Rhodes said. "Guile had fully arrived."

He got so used to the look that he wanted to be in the chair even on days he wasn't shooting, just to soak up as much as he could from a cast that included 50 Cent and Jason Momoa. "The fact that we were just there for each other the whole time, a real lightning in a bottle," he said. "Felt like we were part of a sports team."

Juggling the day job

Rich wanted to know how Rhodes balanced Hollywood with WWE. Rhodes said he won the title from John Cena at MetLife for SummerSlam and then went off to film, without the old wrestling routine of writing a champion off television with an injury angle.

He credited modern WWE's leadership, including Nick Khan and Triple H, for making it easy. "Other guys filled in while I was gone. I was able to come back and get right back into it."

Did he try to recruit Momoa into the ring? Rhodes said Momoa has "all the tools for it already," and that he spent the production explaining the wrestling world to everyone. "We love to have guests. We love to try a celebrity moment," he said. "It's an open invite." He even floated Olivier, the 7-foot Dutch giant who plays Zangief: "That's a no-brainer. Get him out. You don't have to do anything. People run into you."

Wrestlers do not know movie fighting

The fight work was a different discipline entirely. Rhodes said he was glad the stunt coordinator didn't look at him and assume a wrestler would have it handled. "I needed all the help I could," he said. "I'm used to punching a guy on the forehead, getting a little bit of contact, maybe not too much. In this world, a lot of across the frame."

He noted Roman Reigns, who plays Akuma in the film, was also heavily involved in the stunt work, and that the crew knew "not to make the mistake of thinking the wrestlers know what they're doing." Every day, he trained.

The Arrow incident

Rich asked whether he ever connected with anyone by accident. Rhodes had a story.

His very first TV job was an episode of Arrow. The assignment was simple: walk down an alley, punch a cop, go up the stairs, say "Let's go," close the door. Nobody explained the camera trick to him, so he threw what he calls a Macho Man punch, grabbing the back of the head and aiming for the forehead, the spot wrestlers consider safest.

"So I just leveled this gentleman in the forehead," Rhodes said. "His knees buckled and he fell down, and I didn't hit him that hard, but I was so embarrassed that I kept going." He climbed the stairs, delivered his line, and closed the door. "And then that gentleman wasn't there the rest of the shoot."

Rich noted IMDb credits him with seven episodes of Arrow. "They brought me back," Rhodes said. "I learned and grew, and I didn't hit him that hard."

Rich also flagged a 2006 Disney credit on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Rhodes said it's fake, a running joke among wrestling fans about him and Zack Ryder. His verdict on scrubbing it? "Let it rock."

Naked Gun and Liam Neeson

Rich confessed he audibly said "That's Cody Rhodes" in the theater when Rhodes turned up as the bartender in Naked Gun opposite Liam Neeson.

Rhodes said when the cameo offer came in, his wife Brandi summed it up: "Well, he's a Jedi." As a huge Star Wars fan, that was the hook. "It's Qui-Gon Jinn," he said, "not thinking about Schindler's List."

Neeson, he said, "couldn't have been a sweeter, nicer" scene partner, riffing back and forth with the bartender and trying new things. Neeson was banging Rhodes's head on the bar with a little pad there, take after take, and Rhodes said the whole scene made the final cut.

The best part came later. While filming Street Fighter in Australia, the cast went to see Naked Gun, and Rhodes never told them he was in it. Right before his scene, he leaned over to Centineo and said, "Hey, check this bartender out." He called it "a real rewarding moment."

His scouting report on Neeson as a wrestler? "He had enough of a grip. He could handle himself in the ring for sure." TJ suggested a classic foreign-menace gimmick, and the room landed on simply "Liam."

O'Shea Jackson Jr. in the robe

Midway through, Rich pointed out that O'Shea Jackson Jr. was standing off to the side wearing Rhodes's robe. "That's respect over there," Rich said.

Rhodes said he walked out of the green room just as Jackson walked in wearing the full thing, and he loved it. He told Jackson he wished they made the robe for kids, since kids buy the replica the most, "but it clearly doesn't fit them. So you'll see them just dragging around these arenas, just draped in this giant thing. But it looks great on O'Shea."

Jackson's Lakers had won the night before, and Rhodes noted that the No Contest Wrestling podcast got its start right here on the show.

The acting bug, and the chair

TJ asked the big one: has Rhodes caught the bug? "Hard have the bug," he said, while making clear that "wrestling is my whole life" and the day job isn't going anywhere.

He credited Dave Bautista, John Cena and The Rock for opening doors. "They've made it so that we can walk into a lot of these rooms and they know we have something to offer," he said. "It's not like it used to be where, hey, you can only pick one or the other." He also praised WWE's production operation in Connecticut as "second to none."

Rich ended with a standing offer to guest host. Rhodes hesitated, citing Seth, who was the first wrestler to fill in. Then he added that Seth showed up at the Street Fighter premiere. "He's a real one," Rhodes said, before admitting he has kept a list of who showed up and who didn't post. "There's three wrestlers in this movie and you can't throw up a 'Hey, go see this thing, guys'?"

Reminded that The Miz has also sat in the chair, Rhodes warmed up. "I am very open to this idea," he said. "Baby steps."