During a recent appearance on the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, Cody Rhodes commented on the importance of the key demographic, how AEW can improve, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On how he’d grade AEW’s first full year: “Somebody asked me, grade it, and of course, as part of the company, you not gonna give it a bad grade. I said A, and there’s room for an A+ because we know where we need to grow. AEW’s first year, if it was its last year – thank gosh it wasn’t – it’s still been the greatest year of my life. Learned a lot of lessons and learned some hard lessons about the burdens of management. If you weren’t popular before, you’re definitely not gonna be popular as you enter that space. I still think it is surreal, the numbers. That’s why I love the data, and you’re great about the data – ‘The Demo God’.
“I love when [Chris] Harrington shows me this spreadsheet and talks about our international deals, and we’re having these calls. I was on the phone with Microsoft the other day. What am I doing? But then I find myself – I know what I want, I know what we’re talking about, and that blows me away. I told Tony [Khan], ‘Do not give me this job unless you want me to really do the job, really embrace it, which would probably include pissing you off from time to time.’ He’s never been pissed at me. Maybe he has, but that’s been the most exciting thing is the brain trust here amongst the talent, the EVPs, the management, the committee that exists that we don’t talk about. I love it.”
On the importance of the key demo and why he changed his babyface act to appeal to kids: “We joke about the demo, but really it’s not a joke. There’s a potential that, and this is for any show, if you don’t look at that, you’re gonna age out. One of the reasons I’ve turned my act around into a bit of a squeaky clean act is because it’s really not an act anymore. I want to engage a young fan base and not just the young and affluent and cool. I want to engage kids because the show has a lot of grittiness, a lot of violence, a lot of adult content.
“I want to make sure they know, ‘Hey, there’s guys doing right, and there’s guys doing wrong. That’s here too.’ Just like all great wrestling shows when they’ve been great. The youth we have and the demo is really not a joke at all. Anyone who’s not scared, and I’m not talking about our competitor. I’m talking about any show. If you’re not in the youth in terms of if they’re not watching your show, you should absolutely be terrified. 50-plus means you’re losing your audience. Again, this is about TV, in general, not about WWE and not about AEW because we see all 50 shows.”
On how AEW can improve moving forward: “To me, one of our biggest pros is also our biggest con – we have such freedom. So such freedom, sometimes, means that things are too similar on the same show. Well, this guy’s asking me to join Team FTW. Well, in this group, they’re asking if he’ll join this. So that’s one of those areas where that freedom is fun – they’re not worried about the traditional rules. It’s punk rock, but also, you have to be disciplined so that it doesn’t desensitize the show. Weirdly, that was always [Jim] Cornette’s biggest dislike of ECW was that it couldn’t be followed.
“To me, a show has to work not unlike promo work. There has to be this beginning, this climb, and then there’s some heat and a big finish. There has to be a flow. Eight times out of ten, we’ve got the flow right. But on nights that we have, it’s where our own freedom has been our biggest enemy, I’d rather that than a sanitized C+ show. To me, the thing we need to work on the most is not taking the freedom for granted and maybe a little bit more of communication between the boys themselves. ‘Hey, I’m doing this. It doesn’t mean you can’t, but what else can you do? You’re super talented.’ I think that would go a long way.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
