Cody Rhodes On Chris Jericho Thinking Cody Wasn't On His Level, Why Scripted Promos Don't Work
Cody now has Arn Anderson as his "on-screen personal advisor". On the latest episode of AEW Unrestricted, Tony Schiavone asked Cody about his relationship with "The Enforcer" detailing that Anderson is his coach not only on-screen but of-screen as well dating back to their days with WWE.
"I think people don't fully understand the history between Arn and myself. We do have a lot of memories because he was the agent at WWE when I debuted on TV in 2007. Meaning if you had a bad live event outing and Arn put that in the report, you were back to developmental and usually if you were back to developmental more than once, you were gone. His word was law, and he was immensely hard on me not so much in a ribbing way but in a very out loud in the go position," Cody said." He was positive reinforcement sure. If we hit a home run, he'd let us know, but if we didn't, he let us know. I needed that."
Cody made note of the vast knowledge Anderson has. Anderson recently told Wrestling Inc. that his primary focus in AEW has been helping the talent develop their characters.
"I don't mean to sound negative. How you can hire 40 writers even when you have one Arn Anderson or one Dean Malenko or one Fit Finlay," Cody said." That's where the answers are. You can't write wrestling. You have to book wrestling, and Arn just has a brilliant mind for it."
Schiavone and Aubrey Edwards asked Cody about his memorable moments from AEW so far. Cody highlighted his match against his brother Dustin at Double or Nothing and the buildup to his match against Chris Jericho at Full Gear.
"We're making a memory every mile it seems like with AEW. Every week is something brand new. There doesn't seem to be like business as usual, and I get it. It's year one, and year one is incredibly special. I always aim for everything to be incredibly significant which you fall short sometimes. Not everything is an Earth-shattering segment," Cody said. "There's just two things that I thought I knew, 'ok, that worked and people are gonna talk about that. I feel good about that, and I think it will generate the thing we need the most.' The two things were the match with my brother at Double or Nothing and not even the match as much as the throne breaking element of the match. The entrance. The second thing I did, Tony was there, was in Charlotte at Bojangles Coliseum, what a name. I got to do an interview there about Chris Jericho heading into the Full Gear match, and I was just incredibly thrilled with how it came off. I worked really hard on it."
Cody talked about how he and other wrestlers are always practicing what they're going to say. Cody was happy with his interview where he declared that he would never challenge for the AEW Championship if he lost to Jericho at Full Gear. He detailed how Jericho thought that he and Cody were not on the same level, and Cody said he felt that he reached that level by being in the main event with Jericho.
"Never believe any wrestler when they tell you they did off the cuff," Cody said. "Never ever believe any of them even if it was Piper or Dusty came back from the dead like, 'oh yeah we were just doing it.' No no. They were doing it in their car. They were doing it at the gym or testing it on the boys. They were stealing lines from songs. Same thing with Hulk-a-mania. Everything was meticulous and worked on, and I worked really hard on that one. I felt like, 'man, we got it. We nailed it.'
"It wasn't even about selling tickets as much as Chris had done such a good job, and when I was in there with Chris, I don't think I ever told him this, I had mentioned it before. I wasn't just trying to be in the match. I wanted to be on the same level as Chris because Chris did not consider me on his level. I don't know if he does now. I know he was happy with the totality of how it all went, but he didn't consider me on his level in WWE. He wasn't rude to me. He didn't look down on me, but I was beneath him. I was sharing the same main event with him, so if I'm sharing the main event with you, I can't be beneath you anymore. The only way you're gonna believe that is if I deliver, and that moment of delivery more than anything I was really happy about that interview. People seemed to like it too."
Cody discussed more about his trademark battle with WWE. He also talked about his amateur wrestling background in high school as well. You can listen to the podcast by clicking here. If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.