Kenny Omega Praises Cody Rhodes’ Work as EVP Helping Build AEW’s Infrastructure

– During an appearance on the Swerve City Podcast this week, AEW star Kenny Omega discussed the importance of the work Cody Rhodes did when AEW first started and how important it was to build the company’s infrastructure. Below are some highlights (via Fightful):

Kenny Omega on Cody Rhodes as the EVP of AEW: “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.”

On how Cody Rhodes helped build the company’s infrastructure: “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.”