Cody Rhodes on Scripted Promos, Issues with WWE Creative, and More

British newspaper Metro had a recent interview with Cody Rhodes discussing problems with scripted promos, if WWE punishes wrestlers for speaking out about creative issues, changes needed in WWE’s creative process, and more.

When asked why he’s been able to develop a better personality on the indies than in the WWE, Cody hinted at WWE relying on overly scripted promos as the main reason. He felt this hurts more than it helps and WWE would be better off letting wrestlers have more creative input for their promos.

“I honestly think the more time I spend away from WWE the less it was WWE’s fault and the more it was my inability to go with my guts. There would have been a big difference if I had done that. And that would have meant saying no to a writer or correcting a few folks and maybe ruffling some feathers and stepping on some toes, but I can’t think of anything more important for a wrestler than to go with his gut.

Specifically in backstage segments and in interviews, no matter what, if you’re not feeling it, you can’t say it. There was only a couple of incidents in my WWE career where what I said on the microphone was all me, and they were my most successful. It’s not a knock on WWE creative at all, they’re there to guide you and give you the bullet points of where it may be going, but they can’t script it. You can’t script wrestling.”

On the topic of WWE punishing people for speaking out about the direction of their characters, Cody stated he never was punished when he spoke out at times but also mentioned the WWE never bothered to listen to his suggestions.

“I don’t recall at any point ever being punished for anything like that, but I do recall that when I did speak up for myself from time to time it didn’t make a difference. Essentially the answer I would get was thanks but no thanks. I think I developed a reputation as a complainer and that’s hard to escape. You don’t want to be a complainer, you want to be someone who says ‘I don’t like this but here’s my alternative.’

I don’t know, maybe because I’m Dusty’s kid and I have a creative mindset that he gifted me a little of, almost every idea I ever got I thought I wanted to do something different. I’ve told a couple of people this but I feel that I wish I’d played dumb a little bit more and just have fun and do what they say. My relationship with the creative team might have been better, because essentially if you’re telling them every week you want to do something else instead, you’re telling them they’re not good at their jobs. Nobody wants to hear that.”

Later in the interview, Cody was asked about his opinions on WWE’s creative process. Cody stated WWE would be a lot better off if some of their agents and producers were writers instead due to their great minds for wrestling. He mentioned Vince McMahon, Triple H, Michael Hayes, Arn Anderson, and Mike Rotunda as some of the people who would be a lot more effective as writers instead for the WWE.

“WWE is so powerful in terms of their world presence and the talent they have on board, so I think what’s going to happen at some point is that they’re going to restructure all of this. There are some guys in WWE, Vince McMahon, Triple H, Michael Hayes, Arn Anderson and Mike Rotunda included, who should be writers but instead are producers. I would hope at some point they will consolidate all of that, because if you were to get some of these megaminds in a room, you could write out two years worth of TV and stick to the plan.

Wrestling is not an episodic TV show. If you were to come into my office and say ‘hey I wrote 20 episodes of Friends and I want to be a WWE writer’, I’d say ‘that’s great but do you know who Lou Thesz is? Do you know who Bruno Sammartino is? Do you like wrestling?’ You’d be surprised at how many would say they’d never watched wrestling. That blows my mind, and if you were to shift the power to some of the greats in our business, you’d have a big difference.”

Other topics discussed during the interview included Cody being very happy to be a champion in Ring of Honor, why he left the WWE, developing his current character on the indies, wrestling for New Japan Pro Wrestling, and the match he had against Okada at the G1 Special in the US.