Arn Anderson Talks WWE Commentary Burying Talent Purposely
Cody Rhodes left the WWE after requesting his release in May of 2016 due to conflict over the Stardust character. Rhodes noted several days later on Twitter that he had pleaded with the WWE writers to end the Stardust gimmick for over 6 months also pitching ideas that were always ignored.
During the ARN podcast, Arn Anderson talked about the Stardust character and about how WWE plan for talent to change their character but never expand on it to a new level.
"I didn't dislike it from the fact that the costuming and Cody looked good in that character," Anderson said. "Every time I dealt with Cody from day one he would give you the best he could and I knew that there should be some good things happening for him in the business. His attitude was good, his ability was good straight away. And they put this character on him and I didn't know how strongly he was against it until later. I thought he did a good job with it but there was no plan past that.
"To take Cody Rhodes, who everyone knew is the son of Dusty Rhodes, who doesn't have to do anything with Goldust or anything to do with the American Dream but do something to elevate that character. When they change you and your character and you just stay at a level push, if you don't go anywhere with that then what is the reason to change you if there were no positive plans to elevate you? That's what I couldn't figure out."
Anderson referred to a conversation he had with Fit Finley when they both described their hatred for talent being buried by the announcers.
"Why would you take any character that is on our show, that the company professes to be the number one sports entertainment company in the entire world, and put them on our T.V. show with valuable time and have the announcers bury them. We make them look bad on our own show. What is the sense to all that? What could the mentality possibly be to get guys out there and other than enhance them in every way possible, get them out there and make clowns out of them. And it happens all the time."
Anderson was asked about this being a Vince McMahon call to have the announcers purposely say things on commentary to bury certain talents and talk down about them.
"Sure," Anderson said. "Everything character wise passes by the big chair for approval, make no mistake. Characters, angles, you name it."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit the ARN podcast with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.