Exclusive: All Elite Wrestling's Brandi Rhodes on her goals for AEW, teaming with Allie & whether she is DDP's niece
Brandi Rhodes has more responsibilities related to All Elite Wrestling than many people may realize. Beyond competing as one-half of The Nightmare Sisters beside Allie, she is AEW's Chief Brand Officer. As if all of that was not enough, Brandi Rhodes is also the host of the AEW-related YouTube series, A Shot Of Brandi.
On behalf of Sportskeeda, I spoke with Brandi on July 21, 2020, about her daily responsibilities within AEW, her long-term goals for herself and the company, and plenty more. The full interview is embedded below, in addition to select transcribed highlights.
On whether A Shot Of Brandi started with aspirations of her becoming a chef, Brandi Rhodes had the following to say:
Oh no, god no. (laughs) Absolutely not. I'm very much a casual cook. I like to just get in the kitchen and play around. I'm also not a real chef by any means, or cook, which is hilarious. I make so much fun of the audience that watch A Shot Of Brandi because a lot of people that watch it are chefs. Like, 'What are they doing? Why on earth are they watching this show? It's only gonna make you want to gouge your eyes out.'
Brandi added:
But in all honesty, I appreciate that they watch it. I do pick up tips here and there from people who are nicely willing to come and say, 'You know that problem you were having there, all you've gotta to do is this.' And I'm like, 'Oh, brilliant! All of my years of watching Food Network, never picked that one up.' (laughs)
On how Diamond Dallas Page, who calls Cody his nephew, views Brandi as his "niece", she stated:
I don't know. Dallas has a lot of family members. Dallas, in that aspect, reminds me of my mom. My mom has a lot of sisters and cousins and aunties -- I had, like, eight grandmas growing up. That was really confusing for a child, because everybody is very quickly family to people with big hearts like that. Dallas absolutely in that aspect reminds me of my mom. I'm sure Dallas would say yes I am a niece at this point. (laughs)
The Nightmare Family member also reflected on AEW's immediate success and whether it was surprising to her. She said:
I knew that we had a great team that we were pulling together to create AEW. When you have a really great team and you've got the right mix of folks all together, I think that you kind of expect things to go well. Things have definitely gone much better and faster than I expected, and that's because I'm very realistic in that I set goals that are pretty attainable, I don't go too far.
That makes things, like what's happened in the last year, year and a half, really great because I did not think that within that first year TNT would grant us another hour of content. I did not think that they would re-up our deal that quickly, and our merch sales have been so amazing.
Brandi Rhodes also spoke about the weekly TV ratings:
Every time I hear the numbers reported weekly, I'm just blown away. I wouldn't say that I set a low expectation, I think I set reasonable expectations and we surpassed that. So maybe now's the time for me to up those a little bit to see how we do.
On whether AEW has had to work to be inclusive, she claimed:
As far as our talent goes, we've never done that. We've never had to do it, which is really really remarkable and it speaks to what the wrestling landscape looks like today. If you're not having to search and find a demographic, it's all just right there and available, and there are all these people who are fantastic in-ring, they bring characters, they bring a lot of life to wrestling...
Brandi Rhodes shed light on how wrestling is more diverse now than it was before:
We've actually been pleased. We take a look around sometimes backstage and these were just the people that we wanted, regardless of how they old are, what race they are, gender or whatever. It's really been nice and, again, that just speaks to wrestling being so much more diverse these days than it's ever been.
On getting better as an in-ring performer, Brandi shared:
My debut in-ring was terrible. It was my first time on television and first time in a wrestling match and you can only go up from there. I just continue to go every time and it really delights to see people saying, 'Oh my gosh, I blinked my eyes and you got better.' Yeah, because you were blinking your eyes and I was working my ass off, so there you go.
On her tag team with Allie, the former leader of The Nightmare Collective explained:
I do have goals when it comes to my in-ring work and I've never worked as a tag team before. This has been very interesting to me, to see how this has turned out. Obviously Allie and I are not the most similar, I guess. It may look like it's dropped from my mind that she's a little bit untrustworthy and problematic, but it hasn't.
Brandi went on to say that Allie is someone whom she can learn from when it comes to performing in the squared circle. She added:
What I am focused on is winning and she's a veteran in this field. She's somebody that I can learn from in-ring, even though we tend to not always be on the same page with everything. We're working on that, we're gonna get there. But when I take a look back and watch matches with her, and see different things that she did and different ways that we could've done something together or worked together, it's really cool.
I think that that's worked for me, being able to work with somebody who has had so much more ring time than I have and really feels like she knows what she's doing. And still sometimes I'm able to surprise her, so that's pretty cool. To me that shows that there's growth here.
Brandi Rhodes continues to be a regular fixture on AEW programming while handling a plethora of responsibilities backstage. It will surely be interesting to see how her current storyline with Allie unfolds in the weeks to come and if she (Brandi) enters the title picture in the near future.