Cody Deaner Reveals Touching Gesture From Deaf Pro Wrestling Fan, Talks How Impact Has Changed

The Deaners are among the many tag teams in Impact Wrestling gunning for the tag team championships and LAX. Cody Deaner and Cousin Jake have yet to taste gold with Impact, as a team or as individuals, so you know getting a shot at LAX is their top priority.

While Cousin Jake is still relatively new with Impact, Cody was with the company a decade ago where he embarked on a feud with ODB. He talked more about intergender wrestling back then as well as the charity work he does with kids on an Impact media call.

"I go into schools and talk to kids about following their dreams and having big dreams," Cody told Wrestling Inc's Nick Hausman. "Even if they grew up in a small town like I did? I wanted to be a pro wrestler while growing up. That was my dream and no one was going to tell me no.

"I love kids. I have four kids of my own so a lot of charity work I do is all with kids' charities. I work with an organization called the RumBall Camp (for the deaf) for kids in the summertime. Not a lot of kids can go so I've helped raise money so kids can go to that camp."

Cody also raised money for a Children's Center for kids with special needs. He says that all of his charity work is connected to one of his fans he met at a wrestling show. You can find more information on his charity work by clicking here.

"A young boy named Christopher is a deaf fan that I met at a show. He actually gave me my sign language name and I learned from his dad that he goes to a summer camp. So I partnered with charities to help raise money for him. So it's all connected to my wrestling fans and we partner with them to help raise money for these charities," stated Cody.

During Cody's first run with Impact, he was involved in intergender matches with ODB. Those kinds of matches were still a bit taboo at the time, but Cody says he enjoyed doing them.

"When I was doing that stuff with ODB, that was almost 10 years ago. The world today is a lot different and you only saw mixed gender matches if it was something comedic or a special attraction. Now it's not even a special attraction and on a lot of the independent shows we do, there's intergender matches on a lot of the shows," Cody said before adding that that many of the women's wrestlers put on matches better than the guys and he's proud of his matches with ODB.

"I loved everything I did with ODB. She is awesome and is an amazing wrestler and amazing woman. We had a lot of fun. Because of the times, it was a special attraction and was totally different than anything on the card. So, I'm proud of the stuff I did with ODB.

Intergender wrestling is a lot more commonplace now and Cody was asked if he feels he and ODB get enough credit for helping to re-launch intergender wrestling.

"No I don't. I feel like myself and ODB don't get enough credit for the stuff we were doing," Cody responded. "I think that's because there was so much good stuff going on with the show at the time that we got swept under the rug. People thought it was just a comedy act, but I dare anyone to go back and watch the ppv match we had and not be entertained by it.

"Go back and watch and you'll see a good match?a great match."

Cody also talked about other things that had changed in Impact since he was last there in 2009.

"Guys like my cousin that are on the show now, there's a passion and hunger and drive to show the world what they can do. There wasn't as much of that 10 years ago so there's a lot of that now and it's cool to see," Cody said before adding that he's happy Jake is now here and getting the platform he deserves.

The Deaners can be seen every Friday night as part of Impact Wrestling. Impact Wrestling airs at 10 pm EST on Pursuit and Twitch.