WRITTEN PODCAST RECAP: Sam Roberts Wrestling Show (episode 137) w/ Cody Rhodes on being an independent wrestler, ROH, TNA, NJPW and being in the Bullet Club
Sam Roberts Wrestling Show
Release Date: June 8, 2017
Guest: Cody Rhodes
Recap by: Matthew Wilkinson
DIRECT LINK TO LISTEN/DOWNLOAD
Newsworthy Items
- Shane McMahon filmed his own MoCap
- Cody Rhodes has no more TNA dates
- Cody’s merchandise is included in the Hot Topic deal
- Cody broke the merchandise record for NJPW in the Tokyo Dome
- Cody wants ROH to sell out a 10,000 seat arena
- Not much of the Kick-Off show is scripted
- Sam preferred Raw for the first time since the draft
Subjects covered (with timestamps)
00:00 – Sponsor Ads
01:13 – Show Introduction
06:57 – Cody Rhodes Interview
13:30 – A bad independent wrestling story
23:15 – Fan reactions
27:30 – Randy Orton’s ‘Dive…’ Comments
38:00 – Joining Bullet Club
43:00 – Possibility of returning to WWE
47:15 – Marty Scurll joining Bullet Club
51:27 – His role in TNA
65:21 – End of Cody Rhodes Interview
65:30 – Sponsor Ads
67:40 – Reflecting on the interview
71:47 – Sponsor Ads
74:22 – State of Wrestling
79:20 – Extreme Rules Rundown
96:32 – Raw Talk
115:50 – Sponsor Ads
116:14 – Show End
Show Highlights/Rundown
Sam opens the show and welcomes everyone. He says that this is going to be a good podcast. He thanks everyone for watching him on the Kick-Off show at Extreme Rules and says there is a lot to talk about in terms of WWE and says it is a strong lead into SummerSlam.
Sam Roberts puts over WrestlePro who Cody Rhodes was wrestling for when he interviewed him for this podcast, who he said produce a fun show.
Cody Rhodes Interview
Sam welcomes Cody back to the show (which is in front of a live crowd). Cody turns the interview and asks Sam what his relationship is with WWE.
Sam explains his role on the Kick-Off show which he and Peter Rosenberg do and Cody says he has a story about Peter.
The story goes back to when Cody would do interviews in the Stardust character and gave props to Sam for always making his show about the guest. He stated that Peter and his host on a podcast (which Cody wouldn’t name) were grossly offended when Stardust didn’t know what their names were.
Cody said that he thinks Peter’s ego was offended although he said they were total pros.
The conversation then moved onto whether Sam had been scanned for an action figure (which he hasn’t). Cody explained that wrestlers get excited the first time, but then they don’t care and that Shane McMahon did his own MoCap for the video game as he didn’t want somebody else doing his moves.
Bad Independent Wrestling Experience
Sam asks whether Cody is now a journeyman wrestler, but he says he doesn’t want to be that and is simply an independent wrestler.
Sam reminds Cody the last time they spoke that he said he wanted to wrestle at a really bad independent show but asks if he has priced himself out. To which, Cody said he had one very bad experience, but it wasn’t crowd or match wise.
Cody began to tell the story about the unnamed company and how it was booked for months. Cody then got booked for Arrow and he wanted to tell the company he couldn’t work the show anymore.
The booker then told him he had arranged a sponsored post-show event which hinged on Cody’s appearance. It reached a point where he had to take a flight, which would land 30 minutes prior to the show and if there was a single travel issue he wouldn’t have made it, which the booker knew about.
After a great match, the booker asks if he is okay for the dinner and Cody said he was tired after having no sleep to get to the show from Arrow. The booker then said: “Do you want to get paid?”
Cody ended up going to the dinner and said nobody was interested in him being there and he isn’t sure if he got paid for the event over not going to a dinner, which he went to anyway.
Fan Reactions
Sam then asks if the reaction to him has changed now that he is not the ‘WWE guy’ anymore. Cody says he has never been given a grace period as he tends to be in a main event spot and fans expect things at that point.
Cody believes it keeps snowballing and getting bigger. He announces his t-shirts will be part of the Hot Topic deal (which is great news for him).
He says he is lucky about the time he chose to leave WWE as every independent company is great at putting their own product out on platforms other than television.
Rise of Jinder Mahal and Randy Orton’s ‘dive…’ comments
The conversation segues into Jinder Mahal and Cody says he tries to stay away from WWE stuff but he couldn’t avoid hearing about Mahal and his match with Randy Orton. Cody states that he hopes he wins (this was taped prior to the match).
Cody says he loves Randy but mentions he got himself into a real mess with his comments on independent wrestling.
Rhodes says you can’t be just stuck in one mindset and he is surprised when he sees older guys who know how to sell tickets complain about other people selling tickets.
Cody does state that he hates Joey Ryan’s wrestling style and inter-gender wrestling. Sam points out that he has faced Cody’s wife and Cody admits he is a hypocrite, jokingly.
Sam then asks what Cody though of Goldust when he was younger if he has a Conservative mindset. He states that because he loved his brother he never really felt that way.
Cody said that people would say horrible things to him about what Goldust did in the ring and says he did a good thing in bringing out a lot of homophobic people.
Joining Bullet Club
Sam moves on and asks Cody if there was any hesitation in joining Bullet Club. Cody admits there was a little, but only because he didn’t want to be less than any of them.
Cody says the Bullet Club members are the elite (no pun intended) in terms of merchandising and marketing and having a business strategy.
It was a challenge for him and he wants to walk in the same step of the elite list such as Finn Balor. He feels he told the world he was so good by leaving WWE so now he needs to prove it.
When discussing Adam Cole’s departure, Cody said he would recommend that he goes to NXT as people with built brands are protected such as Samoa Joe.
Possible WWE return
Sam asked if there was any point in the last year where Cody nearly returned to WWE. Cody’s response to this was ‘zero comment’ (which gained a noticeable response from the crowd).
Cody did admit they ordered Royal Rumble as his wife wanted to see Goldberg. Sam asked if he misses reactions like what the Hardy Boyz got at Wrestlemania.
Cody says nothing comes close to WrestleMania and said he was super glad for Matt Hardy, but noted he got a major reaction at ROH’s show the night before.
He says that he hasn’t walked out in front of that sort of crowd before and the more he has been away the less he has missed it.
Cody says some of the statistics he has gained this year such as breaking the merch record in Japan (which is an incredible achievement) or gaining record crowds for smaller indy shows is more of his focus now).
Cody on Marty Scurll joining Bullet Club
He admits that it is sometimes hard to be a villain when he just wants to thank everyone for their support. Sam uses this as a way to move the conversation onto ‘The Villain’ Marty Scurll.
Cody confessed he has ‘pretty boy heat’ with Marty as he is a good looking guy too. He thought that was his thing, and he kissed his wife on the lips during their match.
But in all seriousness, Cody is very happy for him and says he likes him a lot. Sam asks him if he is offended by The Revival due to his statements on Being the Elite, to which Cody has ‘zero comments.’
Cody says The Revival have had some amazing performances on the NXT specials, yet the Young Bucks do that every single night.
He says when you have a month of knowing your match where you are all in the same school, the match had better be good (which is a very valid point I had not thought of before).
On the flip side, the Bucks show up and have around two hours to throw together the best match and says he wants to see them wrestle each other. He thinks Young Bucks are the best tag team in the world.
His role in TNA
Sam asks Cody if he just focuses on his own performance and says he thinks Jeff Jarrett might just have a different vision than the Hardys did have.
Cody says he does just focus on himself when he is at TNA and says it’s hard to keep seeing them try and restart with different owners. He reveals he currently has no more dates with TNA. He put over everyone at Impact and said he enjoyed working with them.
Sam asks who he thinks has the best growth potential out of ROH and TNA and he says the partnership between NJPW and ROH makes that an easy answer. Cody thinks that ROH has the best chance.
Cody believes that ROH should take the risk and do more international shows and try to sell out a 10,000 seater arena.
Sam says the Bullet Club is the meta level wrestling which is the language that Cody hates. He responds saying everyone is different and that is what is good about Bullet Club as one way doesn’t always work.
Cody says he has thought about making a new list and the new one would have more than just wrestlers on it.
Sam and Cody bring the interview to an end as Cody congratulated Sam on having a baby.
End of Interview
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Sam says you have to wonder if the Jinder situation is in Cody’s head at all, although he admits it is slightly different as Jinder helps WWE in India. He says if it was him, he would be thinking about it.
He says this is a common thing with SmackDown, from Heath Slater and Rhyno to Mojo Rawley and currently with Fandango and Tyler Breeze.
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State of Wrestling
Extreme Rules Rundown
Sam starts by saying it was great to do the Kick-Off show and says that not much of the work he has done has been scripted. He said he didn’t know that Nia Jax was going to respond the way that she did at Extreme Rules to his question.
He gave props to the crowd at Extreme Rules, saying that they were incredibly loud. Sam had trouble hearing what he was saying on the Kick-Off show due to how loud they were chanting before the show.
One thing he liked about the show was the results which were very heel heavy on the night. Sam didn’t expect both Dean and the Hardys would lose, but he was pleasantly surprised as he felt storyline wise it made sense.
Sam also enjoyed the idea that both men of a tag team had to escape the steel cage. He believes it is the most compelling way of doing a tag team cage match and admitted he has never liked the idea of a pinfall victory in a cage match.
Sam felt that the main event was awesome and confessed that he didn’t actually expect Samoa Joe to win the match.
He felt that the Bayley vs Alexa Bliss story was one of the low points and finds it interesting that they are acknowledging how bad the This is Your Life segment was.
Sam thinks that sometimes people forget what Sasha Banks and Bayley are capable of from what they did in NXT. He wanted Alexa Bliss to win but believed that Bayley should have had some form of payoff.
Sam wants to see Bayley get away from just living a dream as most of the roster were major fans growing up, but they are not lost in the fact they are doing their dream job.
He doesn’t believe that the Bayley character can’t get extreme and doesn’t have it in her.
Sam also had an issue with the submission match as he didn’t understand why it would have a count out or disqualification option.
Raw Talk
Overall, Sam felt that the PPV was good and that it beat a lot of people’s expectations. He also thinks he enjoyed Raw more than Smackdown this week, for the first time since the draft.
He doesn’t think that Shinsuke Nakamura should be wrestling every week to keep him as a rock star. But he does think he should have a presence on the show and should be more hard-hitting.
Sam believes that Nakamura has lots of fantasy matches and if he is going to wrestle regularly it should be in showcase matches against the likes of Aiden English. Saving those big matches for when it’s important.
The reason he felt it was a better show was because some of the segments were so great; such as The Miz celebration segment. He thought it was really good that took fans for a ride.
Whilst Sam doesn’t think we should be excited about another Miz vs Dean Ambrose match, but the execution has made him excited.
Sam claims that The Miz has never been better than he has today. He also thinks he could have had a good WWE Championship run on Smackdown.
Sam felt that the Samoa Joe and Paul Heyman segment was masterfully done and he was sold on Joe being a serious challenger to Brock Lesnar. It reminded him that there are still moments where details are paid attention too.
He also enjoyed the fact that storylines were intertwining with each other backstage and feels like it makes great TV. Sam then wraps up the show for this week.
Rating- 9/10
This was an excellent podcast, from the incredibly fun interview with Cody Rhodes to his thoughts on the weeks wrestling, it was captivating from start to finish. Sam and Cody have very genuine chemistry and you can hear that come through as sincere. It felt like a continuation of their previous interview from last year and the stories Cody had to tell were both funny and interesting. Hearing Sam discuss being on the Kick-Off show provided good insight and his thoughts on the show and both Raw and Smackdown were, as usual, accurate.
About the Writer
Matthew Wilkinson is from Bradford, England. He’s been a fan since the late ’90s with the Attitude Era and was then heavily invested again through the rise of C.M. Punk and Daniel Bryan. He can be found on Twitter at @MC_Wilkinson1
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