Cody Rhodes Has Words for WWE’s Creative Team

Is WWE’s creative process backwards?

Former WWE Superstar and current Ring of Honor Champion Cody Rhodes recently sat down with Metro to discuss his first year away from WWE.

Now that the dust has settled, Rhodes was comfortable in being honest about his departure and his time at the wrestling conglomerate.

“WWE is so powerful in terms of their world presence and the talent they have on board, so I think what’s going to happen at some point is that they’re going to restructure all of this,” Rhodes said.

“Restructure” is a word that hangs. What exactly does he mean by this?

“There are some guys in WWE, Vince McMahon, Triple H, Michael Hayes, Arn Anderson and Mike Rotunda included, who should be writers but instead are producers,” Rhodes added.

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That said, we’re left wondering about the people that are actually writing WWE’s content.

“Wrestling is not an episodic TV show. If you were to come into my office and say ‘hey I wrote 20 episodes of Friends and I want to be a WWE writer’, I’d say ‘that’s great but do you know who Lou Thesz is? Do you know who Bruno Sammartino is? Do you like wrestling?” he pointed out.

Rhodes didn’t stop there, as he continued to strongly hint that some of WWE’s creative staff knows little about the business.

“You’d be surprised at how many would say they’d never watched wrestling. That blows my mind, and if you were to shift the power to some of the greats in our business, you’d have a big difference,” he said.

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It seems odd that the most elite wrestling business on the planet relies on writers who have little experience in the sport. While WWE’s usage of Hollywood writers may be overstated, it’s still a common motif in critiques of WWE. Would WWE benefit by having more wrestling minds around?

Technically, WWE has plenty of experienced in-ring performers around. WWE’s problem sounds more like an issue based on communication rather than aptitude. Wrestlers feel like they’re being micromanaged and not allowed to express their characters in the most poignant manner. However, they can only dispute creative’s idea so much before developing the reputation of being a nuisance.

It’s a classic case of catch-22, but WWE seems to have awoken from a recent creative slumber. Storylines like the Enzo/Cass split and Kurt Angle’s new son have sparked interest back into narrative.

It makes one ask, “why don’t they just do this all the time?”