All Elite Wrestling has found itself winning the Wednesday Night War in the ratings thanks to the quality of the first year of Dynamite. One of the sticking points of All Elite Wrestling that appealed to fans and talent alike was the fact AEW allowed talent more creative freedom. However, with that has also come criticism of the show and that freedom, and Cody Rhodes recognizes it and hears it.
Cody was a guest on Talk Is Jericho and spoke with Chris about the first year of the promotion. While he gave the promotion an A for its work, he wants to continue to improve the product so he can grade it an A+.
“Somebody asked me, grade it, and of course, as part of the company, you not gonna give it a bad grade, but I said A, and there’s room for an A+ because we know where we need to grow. AEW’s first year, if it was its last year, thank gosh it wasn’t, it’s still been the greatest year of my life. Learned a lot of lessons and learned some hard lessons about the burdens of management. If you weren’t popular before, you’re definitely not going to be popular as you enter that space.”
Cody then wasn’t afraid to reveal what he felt the company could improve on, revealing he feels the wrestlers may have too much freedom, with them leading to have similar storylines to each other.
“To me, one of our biggest pros is also our biggest con, no pun intended. 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. Well, this group, they’re asking if he’ll join in this. So that’s one of those areas where that freedom is fun and pro, 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.”
Rhodes obviously wants to have the show be the best it can be. While this may mean having to say no sometimes to a talent, sometimes a no can lead to better things for the talent and the overall product.
h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the quote
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