Cody Rhodes says he once thought about trying mixed martial arts, but his wife, Brandi Rhodes, ended the idea quickly.

Zach Hirsch asked Rhodes on Double Coverage whether the former Georgia state high school wrestling champion ever considered MMA.

“I thought about it. I mentioned it one time to Brandi. I was like, I wonder if I trained and could do it. And that was a rare time where she was like hard no,” Rhodes said. “And I thought, man, she never really says no about my wacky ambitions, but maybe she just knew I’d get decimated or something, but that was a hard no.”

Rhodes said UFC was not the juggernaut it is now when he was in high school, and that he trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu before it was widely available.

“I would go do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And this is before there was a Brazilian jiu-jitsu everywhere. And I was okay. I was okay,” he said. “I was just okay. And it helped me in the offseason.”

He pointed to Chad Gable as the WWE wrestler who would be better suited for a real fight.

“Whenever people bring that up, I’m always of the thought, yep, that was, I was good. But Chad Gable, he was an Olympic alternate,” Rhodes said. “If we’re looking for someone who’s going to lead the fight, it[‘d] be Chad over there.”

Rhodes joked that the only place his amateur background would help him now is in a real fight. “I think the only thing that would help [is] if I got into like a fight, and if I’m getting into a fight in 2026, 2027, something’s wrong,” he said.

Rhodes won two Georgia state high school wrestling titles. Gable wrestled for the United States in Greco-Roman at the 2012 Olympics in London.

Rhodes faces Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing match at WWE Crown Jewel on Saturday, November 7, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The show streams at 12 p.m. ET on the ESPN app with an ESPN Unlimited plan in the United States and on Netflix internationally.