During an interview with David Shoemaker after his match against Seth Rollins, Cody Rhodes explained how Vince McMahon and Bruce Pritchard flew down to his place to meet him and discuss a potential return to the company.

Usually things go the other way round, as it’s the talent who fly to Connecticut to meet the boss but in quite an incredible turn of events, it was the boss and one of his most trusted lieutenants who flew down to meet Rhodes.

Saying that now he feels “vindicated,” Cody said that he drove the point hard that if he were to come back, he needed to be the AEW version of Cody Rhodes, the American Nightmare persona he developed outside the restricted walls of WWE.

“To hear Vince say ‘well, it’s not broke,’ it’s a vindication to prove people wrong who doubted you and prove people right who were on board with you,” Cody said.

Rhodes said that he will be discussing further his return tomorrow night on Monday Night Raw and he is here to settle unfinished business, hinting that he will be going after the WWE title.

“There’s unfinished business for my family that we never got, and I am going to be the one to get it,” Rhodes said.

Meanwhile, his return video on YouTube is outdrawing every single other video from night one of WrestleMania, including those of Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Cody’s surprise return has over 1.2 million views already in a few hours, almost double of what Stone Cold’s match highlights against Kevin Owens has. The overall highlight reel from night one is still under a million views as well and nothing else comes even close to the number.