Former WWE star Cody Rhodes started AEW (Image credit: Getty)
Former WWE Superstar and current Executive Vice President of All Elite Wrestling Cody Rhodes recently spoke to The Dallas Morning News. AEW will soon be heading to Texas for a two week stint in the state.
Rhodes had some interesting comments regarding the AEW schedule and how it differs greatly from that of WWE. AEW currently runs only one live television show a week, Dynamite, and quarterly PPV events. WWE however runs multiple shows a week, including ‘live events’ at specific towns.
“One of the benefits of working for All Elite Wrestling. If you’re a competitor. You’re really only working one day a week,” Rhodes stated. “The really die-hard, committed, kind of golden circle of our company is always working, and that includes wrestlers. Not just management. Their minds always going. But it’s new to wrestling that Tony [Khan] has offered this schedule.”
Rhodes elaborated further, saying. “Some people are free to do independent [shows] on the weekends where they can keep getting their reps in. Some other people don’t need the reps. Like my brother [Dustin Rhodes, formerly known as Goldust in WWE], he’s had 20 years of reps. He’s TV-ready always, as kind of proven by this last week in there with The Young Bucks and Santana and Ortiz. I think it’s the way it should be.”
“I think the model of the live event system, and I’m not trying to knock anybody, is antiquated. The last few years [I was] with WWE, those houses for live events and not TVs were pretty – they were good, they were a couple thousand – but they weren’t the same as the big TV spectacle. It just seems like you’re putting less of an emphasis on your show when you spread yourself out like that. So, I think everything is about Dynamite. To follow AEW, you’ve got to watch Dynamite. Dynamite’s our only show. Four pay-per-views a year. And everything that exists outside of that is shoulder content, it’s stuff you can watch if you want to. And if not, tune into Dynamite and be caught right up.”