During an appearance on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Cody Rhodes commented on his dog collar match against Brodie Lee in October:
“Jerry Lynn helped put it together. The first thing – the night before I’m putting the collar on, the chain, and we’re pulling on each other. It’s like a cage. The first time you get in the cage, you’re like, ‘This is awkward.’ The Elimination Chamber – ‘I’m supposed to take a bump here?’ And then I’m very worried about our necks – any whiplash, and he’s so big. He could make something look incredibly violent, and we could’ve done that Dog Collar Match every night. I’m overly prepared – I like to have a plan B, a plan C, a plan D. So, we had another set of collars and chain under the ring. We ended up using that as part of a picture and frame we made of him backstage.
“I was telling Amanda [Huber] that this was the chain in case the other one broke, he was gonna double clothesline and go put it on himself like an animal and then put it on me. So, we had that planned. Everything went how we’d like it to go. He was really adamant during commercial that we do a really big bump going into commercial. He had me do Kevin Owens’ package piledriver, and he was really confident in my strength. I was able to do it no problem. He pushed me and challenged me as a wrestler. I loved that. One of my favorite things from that match – I punched him with a chain on my hand, and he just said, ‘I want you to punch me in the face as hard as you can.’ I reared back and leveled him, and he just chuckled. You never would see it or know it on TV. But he really wanted to do a Dog Collar. He really wanted to do a gritty, serious rivalry.”
“I was telling Brandi, this has nothing to do with me, but I hated the fact that I was his last match. I loved it and love that feeling, but I also hated it. We were denied all these other great matches. Obviously, he could’ve continued and done more stuff, and I could’ve done better. I hated and loved that I shared that moment with him. But now I look at it as reverence in love just because he got to go out with the thing he wanted the most – he got to go out on top, which is great.”
(quote courtesy of 411Mania.com)
