ARN 05/05/20
PAYBACK 2015

Arn on why the perception of NXT had diminished: “Some of the guys from the main roster have been bumped back down so you have more star power on that show. In the front office’s mind, we will take some of these proven talents and bump them back down to make that a more competitive brand. When they come back down, they bring the RAW or SmackDown style with them. So, it’s not NXT and NXT style matches. Now the dynamic changes. They are seeing a lot of stuff they see on Monday or Friday. Now it’s on NXT so now it’s not a pure NXT show.”

Arn talking about Cody as Stardust in WWE: “I didn’t dislike it from the fact that the costuming and Cody looked good in that character. I know every time I dealt with Cody from day 1 he would give you the best he could. I knew there should be some good things happening for him because his attitude was good. His ability was good. They put this costume on him and I didn’t know how strongly he was against it until later. But there was no plan passed that to take Cody Rhodes to the next level. When they change you and change your character and you stay at a level push and you don’t go anywhere with that, what was the reason for the change if there were no positive plans to elevate you and that is one I couldn’t figure out.”

Arn’s thought on the Ascension: “Why would you take any character that is on our show that the company professes to being the number one wrestling company, or the number one sports entertainment company in the entire world and put them on our TV show, which is valuable TV time and have the announcers bury them. We make them look bad on our own show. What is the sense to all that? What could the mentality possibly be to get guys out there and other than enhance them in every way possible, you make clowns out of them. And it happens all the time. Everything character wise passes by the big chair if it’s the last place they go, it goes to the big chair for approval, make no mistake, character, angles, you name it.”

The full episode is available at this link.