Cody Rhodes discusses The Forbidden Door and what he learned from his time on the independent circuit.
Cody Rhodes, along with Tony Khan, Kenny Omega, and The Young Bucks, changed pro wrestling with the formation of AEW. One of the biggest changes has been the end to the exclusivity between promotions. Being dubbed “The Forbidden Door,” the barrier no longer exists and AEW, NJPW, IMPACT, and other promotions have all continued to exchange talent leading to Fresh exciting matchups and more opportunities for wrestlers.
Speaking about The Forbidden Door on the In The Kliq podcast, Cody Rhodes reiterated that the company is open for business but they are mostly focused on their homegrown talent.
“The Forbidden Door, aka Tony Khan, The Forbidden Door is truly open. We have no qualms about working with anybody from any company, we are focused on the AEW product and the homegrown AEW stars, like Sammy Guevara for example. We have that and then we have the ability to cross the streams. I just want to continue to make the show destination programming, which it's become. I want to continue to provide some of our free agents that have just joined us some fresh pathways that they can go on which include a variety and myriad of dream matches and then continue to cultivate the Dante Martins and the Lee Moriartys. These fresh, beautiful, brand new innocent children who are joining the wrestling business and are so talented. That's the goal and, you know, there's a lot of wrestlers out there. We’ll continue to grow the roster - the more the merrier, because we continue to grow our footprint on WarnerMedia, so we want to give them the best wrestling, and currently, we do that.”
Cody was also asked about his days on the independent scene following his WWE release. Cody would say that the most important thing you learned during that time was to be aware of what is going on outside of your own bubble. In that Spirit, Cody Rhodes would name one talent from MLW that has caught his eye.
“The number one thing I learned, other than to reconnect with the fans and get the love from them that I had I needed at the time, the number one thing I learned is not to be in a bubble. For a decade I had been in the bubble of WWE and then the fact that AEW was able to happen proves that there were things far outside the bubble, there might even have been a bigger bubble. But even with that, ‘Okay, I can't get into a bubble in New Japan. I can't get into a bubble in IMPACT. I can't get into a bubble in Ring of Honor.' All great places, but wrestling has to be for everybody, It really does. It has to represent everybody. That's the number one thing is not to just be this single company individually bubbled up basically unaware of what's out there. Prime example, I'm aware of Jacob Fatu at MLW. I'm aware of these things that are happening in our industry and I think everyone from top to the bottom, Tony Khan at the top, is aware of what's out there and how perhaps we can connect to it.”
Currently, Cody Rhodes is trying to refocus his energy and get back to his winning ways. Recently, he compared himself to Woody in Toy Story. Learn why at this link.
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