Cody Rhodes thinks some wrestling veterans have a pretty convenient reason for telling stars like Je’Von Evans and Sol Ruca to “do less.” They couldn’t do half that stuff themselves.
Speaking on What Do You Wanna Talk About?, Cody jumped into wrestling’s never-ending “less is more” argument and admitted the old-school philosophy absolutely has value. His problem is when veterans start using it to put a ceiling on wrestlers capable of doing things their generation never could.
“There’s this real big argument in wrestling right now about a lot of the OGs want to—and I don’t wanna say OGs—the old—there’s this argument about, you know, less is more in the moments. And there’s such truth to it, and I understand it. And then there’s this rebellious punk rock culture that’s all come up. Like, more is more. You know, you look at Je’Von, you look at Sol Ruca and, like, some of the stuff they’re doing, and you can tell sometimes when some of these guys tell ’em, ‘Hey, do less,’ you can tell it’s because they could never do that. Right? So, somewhere in the middle is the reality.”
That’s the balance Cody wants. He’s not telling Evans and Ruca to unload every ridiculous move they know just because they can. He’s also not interested in pretending every veteran saying “slow down” is automatically delivering some sacred piece of wrestling wisdom.
Cody learned the other half of that lesson after leaving WWE. During a match in Japan, he discovered the crowd hated him enough that tagging himself into the match was getting a bigger reaction than anything complicated he could’ve planned. So he kept doing it.
“Every time I tagged in, they’d boo and I knew, ‘Oh, let’s keep going here.’ Okay, so then someone else would tag in and they’d cheer for him. And I’d tag myself back in until I got them to a—we did this for about 11 minutes. Wow. Maybe like eight to 11 minutes. And then we had to pick it up and go.”
Haku happened to be watching, which meant Cody was about to find out whether he’d figured something out or completely embarrassed himself in front of one of wrestling’s most respected veterans. He got his answer afterwards.
“But Haku was watching. So either you come back to the shame of one of these legends—a legend like that watching—or in his case, he paid me the greatest compliment ever. Just pulled me aside. He goes, ‘That was working, brother.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, I get it.’ Right? Like, it’s somewhere in between.”
And that’s really Cody’s entire argument. He knows firsthand that you can get more out of a crowd by doing almost nothing. He just doesn’t think that means Je’Von Evans and Sol Ruca should start clipping their wings because somebody from another generation decided “less is more” applies to everything. Sometimes less really is more. And sometimes the guy telling you to do less just couldn’t do it himself.
Do you agree with Cody Rhodes’ take on veterans criticizing WWE’s younger stars? Let us know in the comments.
Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.
[ad_1
