Cody Rhodes has to the keys to the kingdom in WWE.
“The American Nightmare” appeared as a guest on After The Bell with Corey Graves podcast for an interview, during which he spoke about appreciating his current run in WWE.
“Well, the things that I appreciate about WWE, it’s almost like we’re tailor made for one another in a sense that I am a bit of a control freak,” he said. “I want to really have a say in what my merch will look like. I also want to see how well that’s doing in every single market, not just the general conversation once a week, every single market, not unlike what I watched [John] Cena do.”
Rhodes continued, “Not just that but everything in the presentation. All of these things that I felt like I used to have to do all by myself, there was a department at WWE that wanted to do it, and knew how to do it, and knew how to do it better than me. So that appreciation I didn’t have when I was a kid. I’ll be honest. When I was here the first time, I remember I went like two years before I introduced myself to Marty the cameraman. Like two years before I knew Stu on the floor, his name. I just was immature and flying at a million miles an hour and not knowing what’s what and how important everybody is.”
From there, the Raw Superstar explained how he feels like he has been given “the keys to the kingdom” by WWE executive Nick Khan.
“I stay there a little longer than perhaps production wants. WWE, that’s a big thing I appreciate is how accommodating they are, in terms of you hear like, hey, the big machine,” he said. “It is an unbelievably, well-oiled machine. I feel like you know, there’s Vince and there’s Hunter and there’s plenty of top brass in WWE, but I’ll tell you a guy who I feel gave me the keys to the kingdom was Nick Khan. I feel like Nick Khan really gave me the keys to the kingdom when I signed and ever since then, every department, everybody, I have such an appreciation for that because they are not nine to fivers. You know what I’m saying? They live it. They breathe it. I have an appreciation and I kind of don’t love the old nine to fivers. The guys who, you know, hey, it’s done for the day and put it away. This is a passion industry. This is a passion job. Nine to five don’t work for me. I mean, I’m texting people at 11 o’clock still. You know, poor Ryan Ward getting texts from me left and right. He’s probably on vacation, you know, whatever it may be. I have such an appreciation for the machine and how accommodating the machine has been for me.”
He continued, “If I missed anything from my time away, and that was such a fun time. Gosh, it was such a fun time. I think the only thing I miss, and I have said this before, is I had an office in every building. I had an office. In that office was some of the most fun. No business was being done. Maybe 5% business and probably Brandi was the one who was doing the business. The other 95% of it was me and my buddies, me and new buddies, new people coming in, hiding people in there. Every week, you know we had the Nightmare Bar, which was, again the heat’s on me. I guess I’m still immature but, fully stocked.,I had a bar in there, you know, once guys and girls we’re done working. I miss that office. I do. Dogs were in there a bunch. Kids, little Brody was in there all the time. You know, I really miss the office. What happens is some of the guys go to the buildings and they’ll take a picture of where my room was and just send it to me, and it’s really sad.”
Check out the complete interview at Apple.com. H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcribing the above quotes.
