Cody Rhodes began his career with WWE, spending a year in OVW before coming up to the main roster. That means that, since he left WWE in the middle of 2016, this will be the first year in his professional career (or at least in the past decade) he will not be involved in the Road to Wrestlemania. Instead, he’ll be working some independent dates in the same city as Mania, but is otherwise focusing on his burgeoning career as an indie star.

CBS Sports asked Cody whether he missed the hype and events associated with the Road to WrestleMania. He said that isn’t hasn’t quite sunk in yet, but he doesn’t feel any need to be around the hype and the scope of the endeavor.

“The Road to WrestleMania always gets people buzzing. And if they’d fallen off a little bit, they’ll come back around this time. But for me, I don’t feel any longing for it or feel any nostalgia over it. I just did WrestleKingdom in front of 40,000 in the Tokyo Dome. They tell you that it’s a lot like WrestleMania. I didn’t believe that until I actually got there and saw the scope of the production and size of the stage and the incredible matches. And the main event is a match that people are going to be talking about for years and years to come with Okada and Kenny Omega. So, it really hasn’t hit me yet. Maybe it’s because I was with WWE for so long. I’m doing only a few shows during WrestleMania week that happened to be in Orlando. I kind of don’t want to be around the WrestleMania experience, not because I don’t like it or [don’t] want to be around my friends, but because like [with] any job, 10 years is a long time be anywhere.”

It’s easy to forget that Cody has had such a fundamentally different experience in wrestling than almost everyone else. After being around the machine and seeing how much goes into WrestleMania for literally a decade, it must be nice to finally take a step back and just not have to worry about it anymore. It makes a lot of sense.