Exclusive: All Elite Wrestling's Cody Rhodes on his proudest AEW accomplishments
The most interesting wrestling-related news story of 2019 was undoubtedly the launch of All Elite Wrestling. Not only did the premiere of AEW's Dynamite bring wrestling back to the famed U.S. cable network TNT for the first time in 20 years, but it proved that another arena-level wrestling company with a global audience was a possibility.
AEW's success not only proved to be fan-oriented, but the entertainment industry as a whole quickly took notice. In turn, earlier this year it was announced that AEW was going to be on TNT until 2023, as part of a long-term contract extension; Dynamite had only been on the air for about three months at the time of this announcement.
This weekend, AEW will be hosting the second edition of its Double Or Nothing pay-per-view. As part of the event, Mike Tyson will be presenting the AEW TNT Championship to its inaugural title holder. The card also includes the company's first Stadium Stampede match and its first Casino Ladder match, beyond a world championship match between Jon Moxley and Brodie Lee; Sportskeeda spoke with Brodie Lee earlier this week about this weekend's match.
One of the marquee stars for AEW is Cody Rhodes, who is also one of the company's Executive Vice Presidents. He participated in a media conference call on May 21, 2020, and I again had the opportunity to ask a question on behalf of Sportskeeda, as both transcribed and embedded below.
On his proudest accomplishment related to AEW:
Cody Rhodes: I'm not always like I am in some of my interviews, in terms of, I don't really have a braggadocious personality. I know there's some milestones we've hit that are really special. One, maybe that I pat us on the back [for], is that I'm really excited for the AEW Unrivaled toys to hit shelves, Wicked Cool Toys, Jazwares.
Dana Massie, Mark Caplan, Nik Sobic, what a wonderful job on immortalizing the roster and making a product that is for fans, collectors, not just our core collectors but also the kids who are watching the show. The kids who also play with these action figures, just like I played with my figures and had all my battle royales, things of that nature. Maybe it's also because I'm sitting here, literally working on the edit for a piece of content related to it. (laughs) That is something I really am proud of us of doing...
I said it on the call and I don't want to harp on it, but the shows that took place in the Nightmare Factory, me and QT Marshall's wrestling school, which is not affiliated with AEW. But we happen to have that infrastructure to do those four schools. I was so proud. If you've ever seen the movie The Replacements with Keanu Reeves, it's a lot like that. There's so many young men and women who stepped up. A lot were in enhancement matches, some were in very competitive matches, but to see them and get to know them was special. I tried to list as many of them in a social [media] post as I could the other day. Some of them won't be "replacements" moving forward, some people in this dark time, there are bright spots and some contracts may have been handed out, things of that nature.
But I was very proud of those shows, the Nightmare Factory shows, and I'm very proud of the AEW Unrivaled toys deal with Jeremy [Padawer] and Wicked Cool Toys.