Cody Rhodes Reacts to Close Friend Ricky Saints Upsetting Oba Femi to Become NXT Champion at No Mercy

The American Nightmare has congratulated Ricky Saints for breaking new ground by capturing the NXT Championship at No Mercy.

Cody Rhodes Reacts to Close Friend Ricky Saints Upsetting Oba Femi to Become NXT Champion at No Mercy

Ricky Saints and Cody Rhodes [via- Wrestle Ops and Wrestling Noticias]

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Merely seven months after emerging in NXT for the first time, Ricky Saints has reached the zenith. He ousted Oba Femi to become the new NXT Champion at No Mercy last night, thus halting The Ruler’s title reign at the 263-day mark. And how could Saints’ watershed moment have gone unnoticed by his close friend, Cody Rhodes?

‘The American Nightmare’ took to X and wrote, “Champ Rick.” One would imagine that’s some big-time approval coming from the reigning Undisputed WWE Champion. However, those familiar with the close ties between Saints and Rhodes already know it’s just a matter of one good friend showing some love for another. ‘The Absolute One’ had started making waves within WWE circles even before he got on board.

The erstwhile Ricky Starks was spotted accompanying the former AEW EVP to the Royal Rumble PLE in 2023. A picture of him walking with Rhodes was leaked online, and it made rounds on social media for days. The next major instance of Saints being in attendance for The Prodigal Son’s victory lap was at last year’s WrestleMania, where Dusty Rhodes‘ baby boy finally overcame the menace of Roman Reigns.

Saints was still under an AEW contract in both of the aforementioned citations. Speaking of whether any of those trips landed Saints in trouble with AEW, it’s somewhere in between. The 35-year-old told Chris Van Vliet on Insight that he never intended to get noticed in his sojourn to the Rumble. However, someone who worked at the Alamodome posted a screenshot of the security footage on the internet where Saints could be seen alongside Rhodes.

‘The Stroke Daddy’ revealed that one of his colleagues at AEW flagged it as an issue and told him that it was a bad look for the company. Commenting on going to WrestleMania XL for Rhodes’ biggest night of his career, Saints had already discussed it with Tony Khan beforehand, and the latter didn’t raise an objection to it. ‘The Absolute One’, however, was unsure of whether Khan actually meant it or not.

Ricky Saints reveals the Triple H phone call that eventually landed him in WWE

From the not-so-amicable AEW departure to the NXT emergence of Ricky Saints, there was barely any gap. He basically turned up on WWE programming as soon as he possibly could, and not having a 90-day non-compete clause certainly helped his cause. But how exactly did the New Orleans native get in touch with WWE?

Ricky Saints and Triple H
Ricky Saints and Triple H [via- WWE]

It’s a fun little story that Saints narrated on Cody Rhodes‘ What Do You Wanna Talk About? podcast a while ago. The former AEW FTW Champion received a phone call from Paul “Triple H” Levesque after he’d just gotten off a flight to Seattle. ‘The Game’ initiated the conversation by telling Saints that the company was interested in having him.

‘The Stroke Daddy’, almost nonchalantly, agreed to it, but his eyes lit up when he heard Levesque speak something about Raw or SmackDown. It just so happened that Saints was getting on to a tram, so he couldn’t exactly hear what the WWE CCO had said.

The current NXT Champion didn’t show the audacity to ask ‘Hunter’ to repeat himself because Saints knew how it felt being in those shoes. In hindsight, Levesque was informing Saints that he wouldn’t be put on the main roster right off the bat.

In essence, ‘The Cerebral Assassin’ wanted the ex-AEW star to meet Shawn Michaels, and Saints was all for it. ‘The Stroke Daddy’ gleefully accepted the overtures that were made to him, and the rest is history. In his so-far-so-good stint on NXT, he’s held the NXT North American title briefly. And now he’s at the top of the food chain. It’d be interesting to see what he has to offer as the NXT Champion before inevitably being called up to the main roster.

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