Cody Rhodes Warns Travis Scott He’s Keeping a ‘Receipt’ After Elimination Match Smack That Ruptured Ear Drum: ‘My Eyes Are Open’

If you think wrestling is all fake, ask Cody Rhodes how he was feeling after last month’s bloody WWE Elimination Chamber match in Toronto where Travis Scott went wild during a beatdown of the undisputed WWE champ.

After Wrestling Observer Radio revealed that Rhodes suffered a broken ear drum and a black eye after Scott slapped the hapless wrestler as he lay bloodied in the middle of the ring at the March 1 event, Rhodes told Complex this week that he kept the receipts and that payback is in the cards.

As he gears up for his third consecutive WrestleMania — where he will defend his world title against fellow great John Cena in the latter’s final WrestleMania match– Rhodes had a stern warning for La Flame. “That’s wrestling,” Rhodes said of the injuries he endured after the rapper teamed up with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Cena for the beatdown. “I am not mad so much, but I am looking and my eyes are open for what we inevitably, what we’ll call a receipt.”

At press time it’s unknown if Scott will be on hand when WrestleMania 41 takes place in Las Vegas on April 19-20, but Rhodes didn’t pull punches about the Elimination Chamber incident. When Complex simply noted that Scott was a “major part” of the Elimination Chamber match, Rhodes cheekily responded, “Oh, he was?”

Asked how hard Scott hit him — and if he gave him the “hey man, just really let me have it” license to do so — Rhodes said, “Well, the next day after the incident, I told everyone, ‘He didn’t hit me.’ I didn’t realize there was a fan video circulating of him hitting me with the power of a thousand suns and the noise deafening. And then I had a Tommy Boy situation where the entire side of my face was black and blue and I kept saying, ‘Oh no, I’m good. I’m good.’”

He said he then had a “little flutter in the eardrum” because it was popped. “Again, I’m a weirdo, this is going to sound so strange, and I apologize to your viewers and your listeners, but man, that’s wrestling. You know what I’m saying? Beat me up. I’m going to beat you up. That’s wrestling… If Travis Scott ever makes his way back into the WWE fray, maybe there’s a receipt for Travis. Prior to this though, by the way, I was a Travis Scott fan.”

Rhodes noted that he went sneaker shopping with Complex last July and that he once owned a pair of Scott’s Air Jordan’s, but that after the match “let’s say they might’ve gone somewhere. The shoes are not there anymore.”

That said, when asked who hits harder, Scott or part-time wrestler/YouTuber Logan Paul, Rhodes gave the rapper his props, kind of. “Well, Travis Scott hits pretty hard, but that’s not the hardest I’ve ever been slapped,” Rhodes said, adding that the hardest he’s ever been slapped was by female Canadian wrestler Nattie Neidhart. “If Travis Scott hit me with the force of a thousand suns, Nattie Neidhart sent me to the phantom zone. Legit, I was lost in space for a second, so that was the hardest one I ever got.”

La Flame has been all over WWE this year. His “4×4” song served as the RAW theme song in January when the show jumped to Netflix and he escorted Jey Uso to the ring for his match on Jan. 6 in Los Angeles. In addition, in January, Triple H teased that fans can expect to see more of Scott in the future. “Everybody should expect to see more things from Travis Scott in a big way,” he said.

Scott recently teamed up with WWE for a “Wrestling Is Real” T-shirt, presumably in response to the online chatter about the smack heard ’round the world.

Gil Kaufman

Billboard