Eric Bischoff cannot stand watching Cody Rhodes conduct interviews for a sponsor and thinks he should be the one being interviewed.
The subject came up during an 83 Weeks episode while discussing WWE’s sponsor activations, and Bischoff said he would not have raised it himself.
“I would not have said it had you not brought it up, but I can’t stand seeing Cody Rhodes in that role for the very reason you just described. Is he good at it? Yeah.”
He was careful about Rhodes himself before making the criticism.
“I have nothing but respect and affection. I like Cody. I do. I just hate to see him doing something that I think dulls the luster of who he is and what he’s achieved.”
He said the position is backward.
“I think him being in that role, you cannot put it any better than you did. He should be on the other end of that interview and made a star.”
He connected it to how Vince McMahon approached the same problem.
“Vince was constantly cognizant about making stars, and this is the opposite of making a star. This broader approach of overexposure, peeling back the curtain even more than it already has.”
The broader concern is a set of sponsor segments in which wrestlers have been asked to perform athletic tasks on camera, including Rhodes kicking a football and Roman Reigns swinging a baseball bat.
“When you send Cody Rhodes out to kick a football, and he’s not able to do that, or you put a baseball bat in Roman Reigns’ hands, and he’s not able to hit a ball, how is that creating a larger-than-life character? What does it do to the perception? It’s undermining it. There’s just no other way to look at that.”
He described it as an accumulation of small damage rather than a single mistake.
“You’re taking little nicks, not big nicks, but you’re putting little things and dents in the character that are completely unnecessary. And I go to, for what? What is the benefit? It always comes down to cost and benefit, risk and reward.”
“Is it so entertaining that people will feel more compelled to tune in to WWE to see what the offering happens to be, or is it just, yeah, these guys sure aren’t nearly what I thought they were? You’re probably going to get more of that. You mean Cody Rhodes can’t even kick a football? Wow, a 12-year-old can.”
He also set out how he assumes decisions like that get made.
“Did Fanatics come to them? This happens with sponsors. You want to maintain your relationship. You’re constantly looking for new ways to integrate and leverage that relationship so both parties can grow and succeed. Sometimes those ideas come to the company through the marketing department. They’ve got a list of things that they’d like to try. Your team sits down with them and weaves through it, and before you know it, it ends up with somebody that has to make a decision about it.”
He does not think that person is Paul Levesque.
“I doubt that that’s Triple H. I’m sure he has a voice and gets a vote, but I don’t think it’s the final vote. I think that probably comes from somewhere else. I don’t know the structure in WWE right now and don’t even want to guess.”
“But my assumption would be that somebody is green-lighting a decision like this who really doesn’t understand the wrestling business. They may understand a great deal about marketing and promotion and licensing, but if they don’t understand the basics of the wrestling business, it can be detrimental.”
Rhodes lost the Undisputed WWE Championship to Sami Zayn at Night of Champions and failed to regain it from CM Punk at SummerSlam, after Randy Orton returned and hit him with an RKO.
WWE has a licensing relationship with Fanatics, which handles a large amount of its merchandise and collectibles business.
