During an appearance on Chris Jericho’s podcast, Cody Rhodes commented on his job as AEW EVP and the company’s first year as a business:
“Somebody asked me ‘grade it’ and of course, as part of the company, I’m not going to give it a bad grade but I said, ‘A’ and there’s room for an ‘A+’. We know where we need to grow. AEW, if this had been its last year, thank gosh it wasn’t, it’s still been the greatest year of my life. I 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. I still think it’s surreal – the numbers, that’s why I love the data, and you’re great about the data – The Demo God. I love it when (Chris) Harrington shows me this spreadsheet and talks about our international deals, we’re having these calls, I was on the phone with Microsoft the other day, what am I doing? But, I know what I want, I know what we’re talking about, that blows me away, I told Tony (Khan), ‘do not give me this job unless you really want me to really do the job, which would probably include pissing you off from time to time’, which he’s never been pissed at me, at least his version, maybe he has. That’s been the most exciting thing, the brain trust here amongst the talent, the EVPs, the management, the committee that exists that we don’t talk about, the committee of thought, which is the Bucks and Kenny (Omega), you (Jericho) and Tony is, more than ever has in his mind, how he wants the show to be as he is booking it, laying it out – I love it. I know it sounds like a tumultuous thing, all those names on paper and those people, and Arn (Anderson) – Arn is out there with me by the ring pretty much doing jack shit except holding this play card up but what Arn does back here, my gosh, I literally want to look at him – where have you been?”
(quote courtesy of PostWrestling.com)
