Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes has revealed a love of Zelda so deep that it got him into trouble with Nintendo’s lawyers.
Speaking on his podcast “What Do You Wanna Talk About?”, Rhodes explained to fellow wrestler Kit Wilson that he used to sometimes put the famous The Legend of Zelda logo, the Triforce, on his boots when he stepped into the ring, before being told to stop.
The three-time champion claimed that he “got a cease and desist from Nintendo.” Rhodes then confirmed that, “it was very kind. They weren’t coming after anybody. I’m not the first guy to have the Triforce.”
Nowadays, Cody has a much more permanent reminder of what Zelda means to him: a tattoo of the Triforce on his finger. “I live that s**t, dog,” he explained to Wilson. “I thought the principles of the Triforce, which are power, courage, and wisdom… For those who don’t know, Zelda’s the wise one, obviously Link is the one who’s got the courage, and power is Ganon. They make up the three parts of the Triforce. That’s the whole deal.”
“And I just like the idea of thinking and leaning towards your own wisdom, or what you’ve learned and applying it, of being ambitious and wanting to be powerful, if you can, in a world that’s competitive, of sports and sports entertainment, and then having the courage to do it,” he continued. “Here you are, you’re taking a dive, you bust your elbow. You’re gonna decide to take the dive the next night, and you bust your elbow even further. I thought it was just applicable.”
That’s not the end of the Zelda chat on that episode of the podcast, either, as Rhodes went on to draw lines between how the WWE fanbase and the Zelda community react to their respective loves.
“People don’t realise it’s wrestling,” stated Rhodes. “Twilight Princess is a story about wrestling. Fans like what they like, and when they get vocal enough, the whole world can change, and I know this first-hand — my whole world changed because of fans being vocal enough.”
“Wind Waker’s a great game”, he (correctly) asserted. “They just weren’t ready for how it looked. They weren’t ready, and they had grown up enough with the series that they wanted — Wind Waker’s a great game — they wanted: ‘Where’s our edgy Zelda? Where’s Link? Where’s, like, he’s growing? Where is it?’ So here comes Twilight Princess.”
Cody Rhodes’ adventures into the world of video games are set to continue well into 2026, as he stars as Guile in the upcoming Street Fighter movie. For more on that, check out how he was kept apart from fellow WWE champion Roman Reigns on the set of the movie, or all of the characters and Easter Eggs we spotted in the latest trailer.
Photo by Jason Howard/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
