Cody Rhodes spoke on AEW while doing an interview with Yahoo Sports where he gave some interesting comments.
Since the news of AEW getting a television deal with TNT to air their weekly television show, Dynamite, the comparison between AEW and WWE NXT, started.
AEW Dynamite goes head-to-head with NXT on the USA Network on the same night at the same time. Instead of paying attention to what the competition is doing, Rhodes explained why AEW is focused on themselves.
Rhodes talked about how they don’t have any of the template that WWE currently has but rather they’re open to everything and their bridges are open. He talked about how a company ran by wrestlers must cut out a lot of the bureaucracy.
Cody Rhodes On AEW
“We don’t think about it being different, our focus is fun, and something like that was really fun.”
Rhodes was asked about if they’re worried about NXT as they have beaten WWE’s show in the ratings while also suffering defeats.
“There’s a romantic way to look at the ratings and say ‘Here we are, it’s the late 1990s again. Every Thursday let’s check ‘em.’ It’s fun to look at the ratings but I know internally we’re not having any pep rally speeches. Our concern is not NXT and I believe NXT’s concern is not us.”
Cody Rhodes On AEW vs. NXT
Rhodes continued by noting that if anyone is going to succeed then they cannot be a reactionary brand. He does think a positive takeaway that the ratings war doesn’t show is that there is a lot less crossover between the fan bases.
This means fans aren’t going back and forth between the two shows. Thus, it means there’s a lot of people just watching wrestling on Wednesday nights and he thinks making wrestling destination programming again is cool.
