Court Bauer recently spoke with Inside the Ropes about WWE using Dusty Rhodes in the Cody Rhodes angle on RAW and more. Check out the highlights:
On Dusty Rhodes’ RAW appearance: “The problem I have is that you’re going from Virgil to Dusty and Runnels to Rhodes it’s just to me, that you’re playing to such a small margin of the audience when you do that. If you look at anything in the world of entertainment, you know you don’t call Tom Cruise by his real name, which isn’t Tom Cruise, you just call him Tom Cruise because that’s what everyone identifies him as. Wrestling in general is a fantasy world so you play within the rules of that world but then when you say y’now ‘Oh this is happening behind the scenes’ and you play on it too much, it’s not as provocative and fascinating as it was in say 1998 because it’s kinda been done to death. I just don’t know how much of this audience knows who Dusty Rhodes is. He’s 67 years old, I don’t know when he last performed for WWE in a regular capacity or with any notoriety, and now you’re calling him two different names, it’s hard. There’s a lot of kids watching that weren’t even born when WCW went under, and they’re watching this so do they understand Dusty? Do they know who he is? Now you’re calling him two different names, it’s just confusing. I’m not saying you need to dumb down a product but just sometimes I think there’s way too much of that stuff.”
On TNA possibly taking iMPACT! off the road: “Depends on the location. Is it gonna be the location forever or just for a season? You know, do you change it up four times a year, what do you do? There’s so many variables in a location that I doubt they could get a similar deal like they had at Universal. Someone else has already got that slot. If you go anywhere else in Orlando, you’re competing with NXT which you can’t compete with in terms of promotion, in terms of support from the community, I mean WWE has locked Orlando up air tight now. So, do you go to New York? Yes, it’s very easy to get a crowd any week you need to shoot wrestling but it’s very expensive in New York, every building is expensive. I promoted in New York with MLW and let me tell you that was no cheap day at the office. That was a big cheque cut to the Hammerstein Ballroom. So where do you go? Do you go to Las Vegas, cut a deal there, they’re good at papering, OK. Is there a community there to support it, I don’t know. LA – iffy. Chicago’s a great market but every week? I don’t know. I think you could do it, but it’s a very tricky proposition. They made Nashville work, so I guess you could do any market. They did Nashville for a long time. But wherever you go, you’re gonna experience fatigue at some point even if your product is amazing.”
