Cody Rhodes

Or am I being too much of a AEW mark and Cody is good where he is, a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

I fucking LOVE AEW btw.

The thing is that Cody was 100% part of the WWE system and probably needed the experience of doing ROH and New Japan to figure out who he was as a wrestler. If the WWE system is all you know, then you're only ever going to be what Vince McMahon sees in you. Cody was the first guy to break out of that and make real money elsewhere, and now you're seeing for the first time in a while all these other guys realizing that you don't HAVE to sign the contract that WWE puts in front of you.