Cody Rhodes talks his track record with regard to having creative freedom like he did in All Elite Wreslting and Ring Of Honor.
Rhodes had a history of strange booking decisions and character decisions. For example, he booked himself into a corner several times while also having some silly ideas for segments and promos.
Cody recently sat down with Dale Earnhardt Jr. to record an episode of The Dale Jr. Download podcast and spoke about his history of creative botches. He also notes that he wishes someone had stepped in to stop some of his ideas.
Sometimes I get in my own way, when it comes to my own creative and there’s a prime example. When I was in this company named Ring of Honor, wonderful company that really took care of me and Joe Koff was the guy who got me, amazing. But they just let me do whatever. A WWE guy, people are coming to see him, you know, because they were smaller crowds. He’s got a big autograph line, let’s whatever and one of the things I did was I had two mascots that were people in bear suits. It didn’t make a lick of sense and they’d be at the signing stamping with me. One was a business bear, one was the drug-free bear. It was all this nonsensical — it stemmed off a YouTube series so it had roots, but if I look at the photos and you see me with these two bears behind me, that’s what creative freedom gone too far — that’s what it looks like. I loved it (he laughed). Even my time at AEW as Executive Vice President President, also in my way a little bit. Someone else make a decision for me here, you know? Because at that point, I had made all these decisions. I’m making it, I’m doing it my way. You need guidance, you need those people who’ve been there and done it and yeah, so I had some big home runs and some big misses.
I have a whole new respect for this writing team that WWE has; Ed Koskey, Ryan Ward, Ryan Callahan, my guy Brian. I had a whole new respect for them because you gotta write — that somebody’s gotta write these guys’ ideas, somebody has to format. Formatting a show which I — that when I was away, I formatted the shows at AEW for a hot minute and then quickly realized I wasn’t great at that.
And when I was away from WWE, I thought the writing team was the dumbest ever. ‘But why did you need 40 people?’ I thought, ‘Why do you need all this? Why do you need all that?’ And then I realized through trial and error, doing my own interviews, I can hit a home run on my own but also, I am capable of a catastrophic strikeout at the plate and maybe it would have been nice to have somebody there go, just don’t say this. Say it a little differently.
Cody Rhodes
Now, Rhodes is signed to WWE and is one of the top stars in the company. While he may not have the same creative freedom he had in AEW, perhaps that is for the best.
H/T to POST Wrestling
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