In an interview with The Phoenix New Times to promote this Sunday’s WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view, Cody Rhodes discussed tag team wrestling, if he travels with Team Rhodes Scholars tag team partner Damien Sandow, the Michael McGillicutty/Joe Hennig debate and more.
Highlights of the interview are below:
On the revival of tag team wrestling in the WWE: “You know, when it’s like classified like that, I hate it. Because tag team wrestling — especially in the south, not so much in old WWE — but tag team wrestling is just part of sports entertainment. That tag at the right point, on the right night should be the most exciting 15 seconds of your life. But when you talk about the overall, the renewal, I don’t know, I still want to see something from a lot of guys. I think Damien and I stick out like sore thumbs because we’re very good at what we do. But we also have guys like The Usos, that’s a true tag team, they’re brothers, and I keep wondering when are they going to give themselves the kick in the a** to show us all what they can do because I know for a fact they’re extremely talented. The same with guys like Justin Gabriel and Tyson Kidd. Anybody who’s in the know knows that Jason Kidd is an absolute assassin in the ring. So if they want to be part of this resurgence, if they don’t want a guy like Kane and a guy like Daniel Bryan — who are as well good as singles as they are in a tag, same with Damien and myself — if they don’t want to [things] dominated by guys like that, if they want it to be the true tag teams, then they really have to step up.”
The debate on Joe Hennig’s WWE name (Michael McGillicutty): “He’s like a hot button issue because he’s obviously really talented and he has his legacy and Mr. Perfect was who he was. I always looked at it and I think I’m wrong cause I don’t know anything other than what anyone else would know in this situation. I always looked at it as that “Boy Named Sue” type of thing and if he could move forward with such a silly name then he really was worth his weight. I don’t know if he looks at it…that’s just the philosophy I had on it. It is such a bad name. But there is, certain guys have certain magic and I don’t mean to bring myself up on here but this crowd today is chanting Cody’s mustache. I feel like if my mustache is getting a certain reaction then I’m doing something right. And this type of thing when I think about Joe, if I had put together a stable of young second generations it would be Joe Hennig. I don’t, at this point, I don’t know if it will ever be Joe Hennig.”
If he travels with Damien Sandow: “I’ll be honest with you, we don’t. I tried to ride with him two weeks ago and he has this secret road agenda he’s up to that I’m like now curious about spying on to see what he’s doing. I have no clue. But he basically ignored me for the first time in our long friendship because I’ve known him since OVW. So now I will never ask him again because now he offers every week, but I will never ride with him again because he’s up to something so I’ll let him get it out of the way.”
The interview is available in full at this link.
