Cody Rhodes Recalls Rejected Gimmicks He Thought Of Before Leaving WWE
Cody Rhodes recently appeared on The Dan Le Baturd Show. AEW Dynamite will be airing live for the first time since April, as the company will alternate between live and taped shows through the end of May. Cody talked about how difficult it is to work under the shelter-in-place regulations and how AEW Dynamite remained on the air.
"Yeah, it's incredibly difficult and arduous in terms of navigating this current quarantine and shelter-in-place, but we were very fortunate that a lot of the content you're seeing on Dynamite and the peripheral content, a lot of the content was taped previously right before a lot of the stricter regulations came down," Cody said. "We don't really ring that bell that often because it's really a new Dynamite each week, but we were fortunate enough to get a lot of stuff in the can, very long days of shooting, so we can figure out what to do."
Le Baturd also asked if there were any rejected gimmicks that he and his father Dusty tried that didn't work. Cody talked about two ideas that he had collaborated on with his father at the WWE Performance Center.
"He made everything work. For me, I went through a phase, before I left WWE, where I was going in on a regular basis to the Performance Center where he worked, and I was doing these projects with him. And I'm really blessed that I got the chance to do them," Cody said. "None of them got green lit, but there was one based on Tony Stark as kind of a prince in the industry, the opposite of the common man which Dusty was.
"Stardust, when I was doing the Stardust character, I really wanted to have a hairless cat. So my poor dad, he's trying to produce this promo, and I've got this hairless cat in there in the makeup and the glitter. And he's watching his son just absurd pieces of business, but he was always really helpful. At the end, everything I flew against the wall didn't stick, which the ultimate answer of that was why don't I try being myself and see if that sells any tickets. And that's where I've been fortunate and blessed enough to have the most success."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit The Dan Le Baturd Show with Stugotz with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.