AEW Star MVP Recounts Laborious WWE Match With Cody Rhodes, Vince McMahon 'Game'
AEW star MVP spent many years in WWE, where he held the WWE Tag Team Title, as well as the WWE United States Title. In that time, MVP had to deal with a lot of changes.
"One of my favorite stories...It was a match with me vs. Cody Rhodes," MVP remembered on "Marking Out." Rhodes and MVP had been working together on house shows and had built up solid chemistry. Both men felt comfortable making an outline for the match and then filling in the blanks. "That day, they kept changing our time for the match."
MVP says the match length went from 15 minutes to 12 minutes and so on.
"So we're the main event of the NXT show. It's live. Cody went out first," MVP remembered. "I just remember hearing [the ring announcer say] 'Cody Rhodes!' and then Laurinaitis says, 'Hey kid, come here...I need two break spots.'"
Producers had decided to scrap the segement that followed the match, meaning that MVP's win over Cody was going to take three segments, instead of the allotted two.
"A segment is roughly 8 minutes, and then there's two minutes of commercial time...We're still working through those two minutes, so we went from two segments to three [roughly 28-minutes]," MVP remembered. While MVP was aware of the change, Rhodes was already in the ring. MVP explained that every commercial break has to begin with a big moment in the ring to send to commercial. "One break spot, I remember, was a Superplex, and the other I don't remember what it was but I gave them two break spots. Cody's clueless."
'It Was A Game To Him...'
MVP had the referee go tell Cody Rhodes the new plan.
"From across the ring...I hear Cody go, 'What the f***!'" MVP chuckled. MVP assured Rhodes that they would get through the match, and they did, until the referee came over to tell them of a change of plans, seconds before the finish. "The referee says 'Vince, says Cody's [winning].'"
MVP once again heard Cody's profane exclamation and told the second-generation star to counter his finisher with a Cross Rhodes, which Cody did, winning the match.
"We come back through the curtain, and Vince takes off the headset, and he's laughing," MVP remembers. "That sh** was funny as hell to him. It was a game to him...but if we had f***ed that up, he wouldn't have been laughing. It wouldn't have been funny at all...If you want to be on live television, you have to learn to do it on the fly."
MVP and Rhodes remain stars to this day, with Rhodes the current Undisputed WWE Champion in WWE, while MVP is mentoring the Hurt Syndicate, and -somewhat begrudgingly- MJF in AEW. McMahon has since departed WWE, amidst investigations into his use of company finances for hush money payments, retirning from all duties at WWE and TKO Group Holdings in 2024.