Cody Rhodes finally finished his story at WrestleMania, and when he got backstage, he was gifted the Rolex watch that his father, WWE Hall of Famer Dusty Rhodes, pawned to send him to acting school.
WWE President Nick Khan, Triple H, and Bruce Prichard managed to track it down and, in an interview with SI Media With Jimmy Traina, the American Nightmare shared the story of how the watch ended up being pawned and what it meant to him.
"Always wanted it, assumed I would get it. I used to go into his room and his jewellery dish and I put it on my wrist and it was far too big," Rhodes recalled. "When he passed away, I just assumed it was coming to me. Then I thought, 'Oh, you know, that's selfish of me.' Maybe it comes to Dustin, you know, Dustin deserves it just as much."
"And then I found out none of us were getting it, we're going to get pocket knives instead and his cowboy stuff because he had pawned it so that I could go to the Howard Fine acting studio in LA and that was the cash he handed me when I was pulling out of Marietta, Georgia to drive all the way over to Studio City there."
Confirming the watch he was gifted was indeed the exact same one his father sold, Rhodes added, "They tracked the watch down. There's this big discussion on, 'Is it the watch?' And the best thing I can tell you is it is." He'd go on to say receiving it was a "full-circle moment" for him.
Talking of watches, the new Undisputed WWE Universal Champion recently revealed that he gifted Seth Rollins a Rolex watch before their match together during WrestleMania Night 1.
"I remember for Wrestlemania with Shawn Michael vs. Ric Flair, they had the custom Rolexes for each other with, I think, it was 23 was the number," he explained. "But I got it into my mind that I wanted to do something for Seth. We've had such a unique, competitive, challenging relationship, but, also we really were going to do this together.'
"And the fact that he was going to be in the main event of WrestleMania, a spot a lot of people thought he should have been in multiple times already, I wanted to have that moment with him and I like to give gifts."
As for whether it's true he also gave a watch to Roman Reigns and The Rock, Rhodes said, "I can't confirm that I gave one to Rock or Roman...you might be right [Laughs].
The Final Boss recently revealed that he returned a gift Rhodes gave him when they crossed paths on the RAW after WrestleMania, so we'd expect that to be revised on WWE programming somewhere down the line.