Cody interview
On his match with Lance Archer:
Rhodes: “What a break-the-mold kind of professional wrestler, to have the speed, but the size, we all saw the same thing, him walk the top rope, and not just come off a full moonsault onto Dustin. For me, I was always really proud, and I was always really honored to be selected for this tournament. Hopefully, when people look back on it in the years to come, it has a soft spot for them because, during this national crisis we have as a nation, and, you know, as a global audience, that was there for you every week, and it had some of the beat competitors AEW has to offer.”
On the TNT Championship:
Rhodes: “What people may not know about the TNT championship, it didn’t come from the creative minds at AEW. It came from TNT and that, to be selected, it was an honor. That’s all the positives. The negative is the fact that Lance Archer stands in my way of a championship lifestyle, but I guess I’m the underdog, and I’m okay with that. I look forward to being across the ring from Lance, as wild as a thing as it is to say. And I learned a lot from watching him and Dustin. I wish Dustin hadn’t gotten hurt. I don’t think I should have thrown in the towel. It’s not my decision to make, but I think he showed a lot of his cards in that match, and hopefully I can take advantage of that.”
On why he needs the TNT championship:
Rhodes: “I love all those stats but they’re almost like tenure stats, just cumulative, ‘Look at his game after he’s gone’ type stats versus here and now, and here and now is the TNT championship. So when you’re a second-generation, third-generation, whatever, and you join this, you’re almost always set with the standards that were laid before you. Well, my standards are pretty lofty. Dusty was a three-time world champion and started everybody and their mother when it comes to giving them their debuts and their breaks. I mean, he really had a significant chunk of wrestling’s total legacy. I don’t do this to be anything other than the greatest, anything other than the absolute best. That sounds ridiculous, but I really still believe in dreams, and you get better every day. Every day since I started, which is really 15 years old, since I started, I’ve tried to be a better wrestler the next day. So I’m gonna be 35 in June, and I said I’m only gonna do this until 40 years old. I don’t know if that’s accurate, rarely ever in wrestling, but that’s what I said. And I wanna make sure that two people in particular never to work a day in their lives. That’s my wife, who will choose to work every day, maybe because that’s who she is, and my mother, who refuses to acknowledge that I’m still doing everything I can to take care of her. But I want to make sure they know that I did it, and I did it with wrestling.”
On his match with Joey Janela:
Rhodes: So we’re gonna enter the Janela Zone. Sometimes, when people ask the question of, ‘Well, this is out of nowhere,’ I often kinda laugh because, to me, it’s not, it’s a wrestling company. There’s wrestling in the title…. Two guys are gonna wrestle, two women are gonna wrestle, we have to have matches and Joey Janela’s a match I wanted, on a short list of matches that I really wanted in 2020, in this year. Joey’s a completely different competitor and maybe that’s what I need. I’m not looking at this as a warm up match by any means, you can’t with somebody like ‘The Bad Boy,’ like Joey Janela. If anything, I’m looking to get in there, and mix it up, take one on the chin, I don’t know, there’s something about going into Double or Nothing completely cold, weeks off versus this match happening, win or lose, this match happening, getting me in the right place because there’s no way to prepare for wrestling other than wrestling.”
The full interview is available here:
.@CodyRhodes talks candidly with @TonySchiavone24 about the #TNTChampionship Tournament, @LanceHoyt as his opponent in the finals, & discusses his upcoming match on Dynamite against @JANELABABY & how important it is.
Watch #AEWDynamite every Wednesday night on @TNTDrama 8e/7c. pic.twitter.com/yejF3waXR1
— All Elite Wrestling (@AEW) May 3, 2020
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