Cody Rhodes Explains Where AEW Can Improve, Grades The Company At This Point

AEW Executive Vice President Cody Rhodes joined fellow AEW star Chris Jericho on his podcast, Talk Is Jericho, recently. Throughout the brief history of AEW, Rhodes has been extremely open about the direction of the company and things that they could do better or improve upon. This interview was no different as he let listeners in on where he believes the company to be right now entering 2021.

At one point, Rhodes was asked to grade AEW right now and he gave an interesting answer, talking about his relationship with Tony Khan and Chris Harrington.

"Somebody asked me, grade it, and of course, as part of the company, you not gonna give it a bad grade, but I said A, and there's room for an A+ because we know where we need to grow," Rhodes said (via Wrestling Inc). "AEW's first year, if it was its last year, thank gosh it wasn't, it's still been the greatest year of my life. Learned a lot of lessons and learned some hard lessons about the burdens of management. If you weren't popular before, you're definitely not going to be popular as you enter that space.

"It is surreal, the numbers. That's why I love the data, and you're great about the data, 'The Demo God'. I love when [Chris] Harrington shows me this spreadsheet and talks about our international deals, and we're having these calls. I was on the phone with Microsoft the other day. What am I doing? But then I know what I want. I know what we're talking about, and that blows me away.

"I told Tony (Khan), 'Do not give me this job unless you want me to really do the job, really embrace it,' which would probably include pissing you off from time to time. He's never been pissed at me, maybe he has, but that's been the most exciting thing is the brain trust here amongst the talent, the EVPs, the management [and] the committee."

In talking about where AEW can improve, Rhodes noted that sometimes the show has a little too much freedom and it gets them into trouble.

"To me, one of our biggest pros is also our biggest con, no pun intended. We have such freedom," Rhodes stated. "So such freedom, sometimes, means that things are too similar on the same show. Well, this guy's asking me to join Team FTW. Well, this group, they're asking if he'll join in this. So that's one of those areas where that freedom is fun and pro, they're not worried about the traditional rules. It's punk rock, but also, you have to be disciplined so that it doesn't desensitize the show.

"Eight times out of ten, we've got the flow right, but on nights that we have and it's where our own freedom has been our biggest enemy, but I'd rather that than a sanitized C+ show. To me, the thing we need to work on the most is not taking the freedom for granted and maybe a little bit more of communication between the boys themselves. 'Hey, I'm doing this. It doesn't mean you can't, but what else can you do? You're super talented.' I think that would go a long way."