Kenny Omega has looked back on the beginnings of AEW and the key role Cody Rhodes played in getting the company ready to go.
Kenny Omega, Rhodes, and The Young Bucks – Matt and Nick Jackson – were part of AEW from the very beginning in 2019 as both talent and Executive Vice Presidents. While Omega and The Young Bucks are still in those roles, The American Nightmare made a shock departure from the company when his contract expired in January 2022.
While Cody Rhodes has since returned to WWE and is set to face Roman Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania 39, it appears that there are no hard feelings between him and the other EVPs as The Cleaner was all too happy to praise the star during a recent interview.
Kenny Omega explains Cody Rhodes’ key role at the beginning of AEW
Speaking on Swerve Strickland’s ‘Swerve City’ podcast, Omega detailed the roles the EVPs played in getting key staff and infrastructure in place, singling out Cody for praise for his knowledge of the business and being able to get that he couldn’t.
“The fourth EVP, we can’t mention his name. Just kidding, it’s Cody. He really…I will assume this is just from knowledge of being in the business all his life because he was born into the business and he understood a lot from his father. He knew what we needed.
“He knew what we needed to line up and the things that I couldn’t get. I’ve got good contacts for any unsigned Japanese talent that you guys need, I can be that guy. The Bucks would be like, ‘we know great guys from So Cal or Indie guys.’ Cody is like, ‘Okay, cool, how about this guy and this guy.’
“We’d have a list of talent and put them together. Then, Cody is like, ‘What are we going to do about medical staffing?’ Oh, right, we need that too. We should have doctors. ‘I have a contact for Doc Sampson.’”
“That’s probably not going to be enough, so I had a dude named Bryce (Ready). I thought, ‘Hey man, I know you’ve taken care of some of our guys and you really love wrestling, would you be able to take a full-time opportunity to do that?’
“We got trainers through that. ‘What else do we need?’ We needed producers for TV, guys that actually have experience doing wrestling production. That was a Cody thing. ‘I can get in touch with this guy.’ The Bucks maybe knew a guy. At the beginning, just to build that small infrastructure, which we didn’t have, when you start checking names off the box, you think you’re there but you’re not because we were so understaffed at the beginning.
“Even to this day, I can confidently say, we can use an extra trainer or two. The tables are always busy. We could have a couple of gophers in case we’re running low on certain things and materials. As things go, you naturally require more people to keep things running.”
H/T to Fightful for the above transcription