Cody Rhodes picked a big week to lock in the rest of his career. The 41-year-old WWE star has signed a five-year contract extension with WWE, according to a New York Times feature on Rhodes and Roman Reigns published this week — a deal that, counted from now, runs to roughly 2031. The news surfaced in the middle of Rhodes's press tour for the Street Fighter movie, in which he plays Guile opposite Reigns's Akuma. The film opens Friday, October 16.
Revealed on a podcast, measured by the Times
Rhodes broke the existence of the deal himself, during an October 7 appearance on the Flagrant podcast. There, he said he had just re-signed with WWE and that he intends to end his wrestling career with the company — "I'll end my wrestling career with WWE" — but he did not disclose the length. He explained that the new arrangement lets him step away for outside projects and return, collaborating with WWE rather than leaving it: acting work, in other words, is now written into the plan instead of competing with it.
The missing number arrived via the Times feature, reported onward by F4W/WON and SEScoops: five years. Rhodes has previously said his next contract would likely be his last as a full-time wrestler, and he has tied his in-ring timeline to family — he has said he does not expect to still be wrestling for a living when his daughter, born in 2021, turns 11, which lands in 2032. A five-year extension to about 2031 fits that math almost exactly. This looks, on paper, like the final full-time contract of Cody Rhodes's career — structured to include the second career he is building while he signs it.
The surprise Guile offer
The reason Rhodes is doing newspaper features at all is Street Fighter. In an interview with USA TODAY, Rhodes described going into what he believed was a general meeting with the production company and walking out with an offer for what he called the role of a lifetime — Guile, the flattop-haired Air Force officer who has been one of the franchise's signature characters since 1991. The offer, he said, was a complete surprise to him.
It was not a surprise to everyone. Rhodes told USA TODAY that Dwayne Johnson called him after the meeting and greeted him with a knowing "Good meeting, huh?" — Johnson, who built the wrestler-to-movie-star road Rhodes is now traveling, apparently knew the offer was coming before Rhodes did. Rhodes's response, as he tells it, was to ask everyone to please stop surprising him like that. Johnson and John Cena both figure in the Times feature as veterans who helped Rhodes and Reigns think through the jump from ring to set; Reigns, for his part, had appeared briefly alongside Johnson in a 2019 Fast & Furious spinoff partly to study how Johnson works on a set.
The hair is a character too
USA TODAY's interview also gets into the Guile look, which anyone who has seen the trailers knows is doing a lot of work. Rhodes wears Guile's preposterously tall flattop — an AMC Theatres popcorn bucket shaped like the haircut apparently prompted a proud congratulatory text from Cena — and Rhodes compared putting on the wig to pulling on Batman's cowl: a different person the moment it goes on. He added that the finished hair is actually the toned-down version; an earlier take was taller still, and the crew spent days calibrating it. When he screen-tested in it, co-star Noah Centineo's reaction, per Rhodes, was essentially: now we're making Street Fighter.
Not going anywhere
For WWE fans reading the Hollywood headlines as a farewell tour, Rhodes has been consistent all week: he told USA TODAY he is "not going anywhere," pointing to the new five-year deal. He returned to WWE in 2022 after six years away — a run that included co-founding AEW — and has since become a three-time Undisputed WWE Champion and a multi-time WrestleMania headliner, the centerpiece of the company's current era. The extension keeps that centerpiece in place into the next decade, while formally leaving the door open for the film and television work he describes as his long-term future as a storyteller.
There is a neat symmetry to the week. On Friday, Rhodes plays a video-game icon in a movie his late father, Dusty Rhodes, would have loved to see — Rhodes has spoken about the role in those terms during the tour. And in the same news cycle, he committed the rest of his wrestling life to the company his father famously feuded with and then helped build. Five years, one movie franchise launch, and a career endgame that is finally written down: whatever else Street Fighter does at the box office, October 2026 is when Cody Rhodes stopped being a wrestler with options and became a wrestler with a plan.
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