# @wrestlingnewsco on Instagram

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- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdW2kkBFmcl
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70540535-wrestlingnewsco-instagram
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- **Posted:** 2026-09-16T17:45:22.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Wrestling News - WWE, AEW (@wrestlingnewsco) — https://gondola.cc/wrestlingnewsco

## Caption

Cody Rhodes says he pitched signing his soul over to Simone Johnson instead of her father.

On What Do You Wanna Talk About, Cody brought up the 2024 program where The Rock demanded his soul, and said he had a counter-idea he'd only ever told two people in WWE creative.

"When he asked me for my soul, I thought, you know what would have been funny is to relent and give my soul, but not to him. And this is at the time when you were the NXT general manager, to you. And I thought, that's got legs." He added: "I'll never say a word again. She'll speak."

Johnson, who was NXT General Manager at the time, hadn't heard it until now. "I think we would have crushed that. I would have loved to have done that." Asked how her father would have taken it: "I think he would have been all for it. Absolutely."

She said she didn't know the soul promo was coming. "I don't think I knew he was coming back that day. I had no context of what the promo would be, and then I just saw it and I was like, soul is crazy." Cody: "Soul was a lot."

Neither of them closed the door on it. "Maybe it could still happen," Johnson said. Cody: "Definitely never say never."

In the same interview, Johnson discussed Vengeance Day 2024 for the first time publicly. Two days after The Rock took Cody's WrestleMania spot on SmackDown, NXT head writer Johnny Russo pulled her aside in makeup before her promo. "He was like, hey, just so you know, like when we play your promo, please don't be surprised if they boo you." It happened, and every NXT post that night filled with "We Want Cody."

Johnson said it changed how she saw the business. "For a while, I thought about it in a very negative way. But then I think, in a way, I'm incredibly grateful that that happened, because it made me much more confident in what I was doing and why I was doing it."

Cody reached out to her that day. "You asked me if I was okay, and then you asked if it was anything you could do."

#CodyRhodes #SimoneJohnson #TheRock #WWE #NXT

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## Tags

therock, codyrhodes, simonejohnson, wwe, nxt

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