Kidd Bandit Says Cody Rhodes Helped Them Come Up With Current Gimmick

In an interview with Fightful, Kidd Bandit, who trained with QT Marshall and Cody Rhodes at the Nightmare Factory, credited Rhodes with giving them their current gimmick. Here are highlights:

On using anime as inspiration for their current gimmick: “It might come off as naïve, but I like to believe that good always triumphs over evil and I think that’s what makes anime great, Shonen anime, specifically. Because if you look at the plots of Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, My Hero Academia. These coming-of-age young adult animes, it’s always about someone from meager means overcoming so many obstacles to save the world, more or less. It’s funny because that relates to so many people. The ‘I’m nobody, and I can become somebody and save the world in the process.’ That’s the basic JRPG plot, right? You’re playing a game, you live in some minor village, suddenly something happens and then you end up with the magic sword from a cave or something. It’s a tale that’s been told multiple times. That’s what wrestling does. If you think about it, the greatest wrestling storylines have that pay off of good beating evil. As naïve as it sounds, I like that. Yeah, I’ve gone through hardships in life that made me kind of jaded about certain things, but I like to think that good winning over evil, or good beating bad, that still holds weight to people struggling with things.”

On how Cody Rhodes helped them creatively: “I made a post about it on Twitter, but it might come off different when I say it out loud. It might hit me different to say it out loud. But Cody gave me Kidd Bandit. I didn’t come up with it on my own. He gave me that. He gave me a platform to do good to the world. In a weird way, he started my anime or JRPG journey, more accurately. Because before Kidd Bandit, I was a nobody. I was some person living a life of no direction and now here I am with a platform I can use to help people. The LGBT community, the people who didn’t really have a role model like me. Man, I hate to say that because I don’t see myself as a role model. I barely tolerate myself half the time.”

On criticism of Rhodes: “I like to think being Kidd Bandit is helping me be a better person, too. I can’t preach all the stuff I say and not live those ideals. That’s hypocritical. I’ll admit, I don’t get to do that often. I’m a flawed human being. But to try to aspire to become that person. The meme is Cody’s trying to end racism. ‘Oh, yeah. Cody ended racism.’ Okay, everybody makes fun of that. But if you look at what they’re trying to do, that’s such a cool thing. Why wouldn’t you want to end racism? Yeah, it’s weenie because of the way people oversimplify everything, but man.”