The pros and cons of less live events.
WWE is scaling back on house shows and an explanation for why was given by TKO President Mark Shapiro. The latest name to chime in on the subject was Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
While speaking to Josh Martinez, Rhodes discussed the pros and cons of there being less house shows to compete on.
Pros and cons (of WWE scaling back on house shows), you know, a pro is more time for rest, recovery. We’re the modern WWE with all the medical protocols that exist in terms of to have the best nutrition, to have the mental clarity, the focus, to be dialed in physically. We still very much are a, you know, I guess toxic to a degree but heavyweight. There is a vanity element to professional wrestling and sports entertainment so in terms of everyone’s preparation, that’s a good thing in terms of being able to get that mental clarity to be able to get your time at home but also be able to be locked in on work. To be able to get the best nutrition, the best recovery especially. You know, they have all these things now with the cold plunges, inversion tables, blah, blah… I’m at DDP’s studio now and half the stuff is in here so, but, the con for me is I only get better at wrestling by wrestling. So, that’s a con for me. How I can kind of mitigate is I have a the Nightmare Factory where we can wrestle and do things and train. But training for wrestling — like, I never believed in wrestling schools growing up because the only way you can really do wrestling is by wrestling in front of an audience. You gotta do it in front of an audience and that will be a challenge for me because I feel like I’ve really kind of slid into the prime of my career and I feel really great. But I know if I take some steps back, in terms of that, I’m gonna have to mitigate it some way and I’m gonna have to find, okay, how do I train for this if I’m not able to do Saturday, Sunday house shows heading into a Monday Night Raw per se? I think the majority of the locker room and roster probably looks at it as a really great thing and from a company standpoint, business-wise, it makes the shows when they do come to your city even more special versus just being a given. So it’s mainly pros across the board. I just have to find a way to kind of keep the wrestler in me wrestling.
Over the weekend, Rhodes wrestled at two house shows. He defended the title against A.J. Styles.
The current Women’s World Champion Liv Morgan shared her opinion about house shows being scaled back and to read her comments, click here.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit YoJoshMartinez with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
