Cody Rhodes is happy with what AEW has accomplished thus far but does see room for improvement.
Speaking with Chris Jericho on his Talk is Jericho Podcast, the AEW Executive Vice President was asked to reflect on the promotions first year (Dynamite debuted in October 2019), and whether or not it's more work than he thought or if it's still ramping up. Here is what he said:
"Somebody asked me to grade it. Of course, as part of the company, you're not going to give it a bad grade, but I said "A, and there's room for an A+." We know where we need to grow. This has been, AEW's first year, if it had been it's last year, thank gosh it wasn't, it's still been the greatest year of my life. Learned a lot of lessons. Learned some hard lessons about the burdens of management. If you were popular before you're definitely not going to be popular as you enter that space."
Cody continued on, talking about how the roster can do a better job of communicating and making sure they don't take their creative freedom for granted.
"One of our biggest pros is also our biggest con, no pun intended. It's that we have such freedom. So, such freedom sometimes means that things are too similar on the same show. Well, this guy's asking me to join team FTW, and this group they're asking if he'll join... That's one of those areas where that freedom is fun and pro, and it's like they're not worried about the traditional rules, it's punk rock, but also you have to be disciplined so that it doesn't desensitize the show. To me, a show has to work not unlike a promo works. There has to be this beginning, there has to be this climb in the middle, and then there's some heat, and then there's some big finish. It has to be like a flow. To me, eight times out of ten, we've got the flow right. But on night's where we haven't, it's because our own freedom has been our biggest enemy, but I'd rather that than a sanitized C+ show"
As part of the Go-Big Show crossover, Snoop Dogg joined AEW Near Year's Smash night one as a special guest. Prior to his match against Matt Sydal, Cody was accompanied to the ring by Snoop as Cody's new remixed theme of Kingdom performed by the famous rapper played throughout the arena.
Cody can be seen Wednesday nights on AEW's flagship show, Dynamite. Fightful provides live coverage as well as a post-show podcast every week.
