All Elite Wrestling’s (AEW) Cody Rhodes was recently interviewed on ESPN’s “Cheap Heat” podcast to talk about several professional wrestling topics.
Here are the highlights:
AEW not following the rules set by Kevin Dunn and WWE:
I just see the way that Kevin Dunn shoots WWE is, and not so much the booking of it but how he shoots it, I see, and of course, it’s kind of setting a ball up for us. We wanted to be an alternative. Now of course, when your counter programs on your night, you are competing, you’re no longer just an alternative, but we still say we want to be an alternative because what we’re doing is completely different. Here’s the only thing you’ll recognize, the ring in the center of the building.
Ok, that’s a wrestling ring. Everything else we’re doing is a very, very different wrestling. And that’s why sometimes it’s fun to kind of poke fun at it, not in a mean-spirited way, but all of these rules that have been in place for 20 years, they’re not wrestling rules, they’re WWE rules. ‘Oh, it’s a contract signing, there has to be a fight.’ ‘Oh, the person can’t just look at the monitor, they have to stand to the side, because that’s how Kevin likes to shoot it.’ It’s nonsense. And it worked for them until it stopped working for them.
And we’re just happy to do wrestling how we want to do it. The good thing about our partners at WarnerMedia and the TNT family, they weren’t there during the Attitude Era or the Monday Night Wars. There was nobody on staff, except for maybe one guy. And that is great, it’s all young, open-minded, congruent with what an actual snapshot of America and the World looks like today, it’s like a utopia at the moment.
Finn Balor being moved to NXT to compete with AEW:
I was expecting the Undertaker teaming with Johnny Gargano on night one and all that good stuff. I’m more mindful of it post-Wednesdays, I got a lot of friends in that locker room, my Dad’s boots are sitting in the Performance Center, so I’m more mindful of it post-Wednesdays, but we go into it more with the idea of what are we doing, and then you got everyone else in your ear, so I’m aware, and I actually got to see the Pele kick he did, and I guess the turn, as it’s been dubbed, I think that’s, Hunter [Triple H] is not a stupid guy, it is public knowledge that we’re five weeks in and five weeks in a row AEW has beat WWE in the ratings, so I’m sure those types of things will continue to happen, and that only brings out the best in us, because I think we’re just untapped.
I think we have all kinds of new, homegrown people that going to be coming up through the ranks, people like Nyla Rose, people like Riho, and I think they can compete with any wrestling roster, our tag division that Matt [Jackson] and Nick [Jackson] have cultivated, so I’d just expect more of that. That’s what this is, we’re living in this period of two shows competing against each other for the wrestling viewer and the casual fan.
Also Read: Cody Rhodes Reveals the School-Letter Grade He’d Give AEW Dynamite So Far
Listen to “The Fiend, Diperstein, and Zelina Vega” on Spreaker.
H/T 411Mania for the transcriptions
