Cody Rhodes On The Kind Of Alternative AEW Will Provide

All Elite Wrestling isn’t going to hold anything back when they debut on TNT. This has nothing to do with what is on another channel at the same time either.

Cody Rhodes recently spoke to IGN where the idea of competition was brought up. It’s no secret that AEW was planning a television show and they have been working on it for a while. This was done before it was known that NXT was going to the USA Network at all.

They feel like All Elite Wrestling has a product that fans want to see, therefore, the idea of competition isn’t even relevant for them.

“We can’t pretend that we don’t know that’s happening, but we were always planning our show. And have been for a long while. This isn’t a reactionary move on our part. This is what our intentions were. To be on Wednesday nights and to be on a major network with such a great partner like Warner Media and TNT. Our focus is still on providing the best AEW, providing the best alternative. We haven’t switched over to ‘Well how can we compete?’ because we already felt like we had a product that people wanted to see.”

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“We want to provide bell-to-bell sports-centric pro-wrestling. That’s going to mean longer matches. That’s going to mean stories being told between the ropes. That means no invisible camera backstage. That’s gonna mean more of a live-sports approach to our product. That’s 100% what we’re doing, so I want to avoid any reactionary elements. I loved the Monday Night Wars, I did. And I’m not trying to be naive and ignore a situation where it’s like ‘Hey, if this happens, we’ll have to play this card,’ but I’m just saying I want us to be more about our young and upcoming crop of talent.”

Cody Rhodes didn’t go as far as Kenny Omega did to say that NXT is developmental while AEW has real stars. He still doesn’t see the competition, only the opportunity to perform on a national level.

We will have to see what kind of unique look All Elite Wrestling could be going for with their sports-centric feel. That could just be one of many differences that this new pro wrestling alternative is going to offer fans.