With All Elite Wrestling set to debut on TNT in just under one month, the next few weeks should prove to be an exciting and hectic time for Cody Rhodes.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Not to mention the fact that he will be wrestling Chris Jericho at the brand’s next PPV event, Full Gear on November 9th (tickets went on sale Friday).
Rhodes sat down with IGN to talk about the company’s move to TNT and abundance of other topics, including Chris Jericho’s brief time without the AEW Heavyweight Championship belt last week. In case you missed it, Jericho briefly lost the title belt while eating at a Longhorn Steakhouse in Florida. It was found the next day.
“Yeah, it’s all intact,” Rhodes said, addressing the title belt. “There’s no damage to it, which was my biggest concern because myself and Matt Jackson are the ones who ordered this title – who painstakingly tried to cover as many details as we could because we wanted it to be a really special championship belt. So I was not stoked when I found out it was gone and the mystery will remain a mystery, I suppose, of what happened. Was it grand larceny? Did someone just put it on the roof? We don’t know. I’m glad it was found. Stuff happens. Jericho’s, like, a 60-year vet and one of the greatest of all time, this isn’t his first rodeo. And he did everything he could to get it back. Thankfully it’s back in the champion’s hands.”
With AEW starting on TNT and WWE NXT moving to the USA Network on Wednesday nights to go head to head with them, 2 hours each and every week, there’s going to be a lot of wrestling content out there for fans to consume. Is it going to be too much?
“As a wrestling fan you don’t have to watch every show,” Rhodes said. “You only have to watch what you like and who’s keeping your attention and who’s doing right by you, the wrestling consumer. I know the rising tide affects all ships, but at a certain point, you’re going to watch what’s better. As one of the biggest wrestling fans in the world though, there can never be too much wrestling for me. I’ll give you an example: As a huge Trekkie, I think about that Golden Era of Trek when Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and Voyager were all on and all crossing streams. That was heaven for a Star Trek fan.”
And it sounds like AEW will try to shorten the match load on their show every week, with Rhodes noting they will have the mentality that not every member of the roster needs to be featured every week.
“We’re going to try and present quality over quantity,” Rhodes said. “Which means that some guys are going to have some time off. Which for the life and the well-being of a wrestler is a great thing to hear; that they’re not gong to be, every week, putting themselves in a high-profile singles match. That, every week, they’re not going to be in a barn-burner tag. It’s going to be a very different show each week. We’re not going to try and cram everybody on the two-hour show. There’s no participation award here.”
