Jim Cornette has passed comment on Cody Rhodes saying he used focus groups to hone his ‘American Dream’ promo that he cut before his match with Anthony Ogogo at Double Or Nothing.
Rhodes cut the polarising interview in the ring where he questioned Ogogo’s disparaging comments about the United States and said while the country was far from perfect, he was proud to be an American. The first-ever TNT Champion had commented during a media call that he had used a focus group to fine-tune what he said.
Someone who is no stranger to a microphone is Jim Cornette who gave his own take on Rhodes’ initial confession on his ‘Jim Cornette Experience‘ podcast:
“The most fornicating-ly stupid thing I’ve ever heard come from anybody’s fornicating stupid mouth came from Cody fornicating Rhodes the other day.”
Cornette then read comments from Rhodes that said wrestlers from yesteryear’s assertion that a lot of their promos were made up on the fly was untrue.
Cornette then continued:
“The point is the focus groups, the workshops. It’s not bullsh*t when guys said they cut promos on the spot because I’ve seen them do it and I’ve done it. Did you think about anything you were gonna say beforehand? Most of the time yes, sometimes no. I’ve seen Dick Murdoch ‘Hey Dick, go out and do a promo’ and he goes out and he does it. I’ve done the same thing. If you cared about what you were doing and you had any advanced knowledge that you were gonna be doing a promo then you would think about what you were talking about but you wouldn’t sit there and dwell on the exact verbiage. You would have the story in your head and you would tell it.”
“The most workshopping I ever did, late at night in the car if I wasn’t driving or even if I was driving with The Midnight Express, I would be thinking about sh*t that I could say in general terms about whoever we happened to be working with. And/or if I knew a stipulation was coming up something that might go along. Every once in a while if I had a good zinger I’d hit Bobby or Stan or Dennis with it like ‘Hey what do you think if I said blah blah blah?’ That’s the workshop.”
“But he said and I quote ‘I workshop my promos heavily for weeks on end.’ He also said they have a full focus group for the promos, it’s a data-based company and he workshops everything he does.”
Cody Rhodes had tried to clarify his comments around focus groups, saying that they were categorically not used and he misspoke.
Rhodes explained:
“I’m gonna chalk this up to me not knowing what the term ‘focus group’ means, because I woke up this morning to a very large amount of people in my mentions, almost all of them with a Roman [Reigns] or a Sasha Banks avatar, making fun of me for using the term ‘focus grouped.’”
“I did not focus group this promo. What I intended to say, and I did not say correctly, so chalk this up to me being a dummy, I work on my promos very hard. And a lot of the old-timers who said, ‘Oh I was just doing it on the fly.’ I would say they worked on theirs very hard, whether it be in the gym, whether it be in the car, looking in the rear-view.”
“So when it comes to my promos, the process is usually I voice memo it out to the people I trust the most, the legends in our industry, some coaches, and some members of management, and I like to see what they think. But absolutely not, there is no AEW focus group that is listening to my interviews.”