Undisputed WWE Champion “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes appeared on the podcast All The Smoke to discuss various topics, including his role as Stardust.
Rhodes said, “Well, so, at the beginning of Stardust, I looked at it as real; this was in the era of you’re not getting a lot of playing time, but they want you to do something special with this character. You’re going to be with your brother, Goldust. So, I looked at it as a challenge, to maximize, to really kind of make chicken salad out of chicken s**t’s essentially. That’s always a big thing in wrestling. Take something that’s a little silly, and then you blow it up.”
On Ludwig Kaiser’s El Grande Americano gimmick:
“El Grande Americano is a guy we got right now who is doing this exact thing. He has taken something that could have been a death sentence for another wrestler, and he’s just making it special. And they don’t mean it to be a death sentence; they mean it to be a challenge. At the beginning of Stardust, I thought, ‘This is a great challenge, and I’ve answered this challenge. We’re selling those gloves. I’m learning how to do the paint. I can be so ridiculous. Uh, my promos have almost moved into this realm where there’s a British accent to it. It’s just gone so ridiculous. All this sci-fi knowledge that I knew I can incorporate into this character.’ But I also gave it a shelf life of about six months. So over a year in was the lowest of low as a wrestler.”
On his favorite opponent to work with in the ring:
“Ah, man, I change my answer a lot. But I’ll tell you one that’s sticking out to me. A lot of… I named a lot of luminary figures like Mr. Heyman and Michael Hayes, but the wrestler in the ring that I really enjoy working with—I mean, John, obviously—but I’m trying to think of something that… I’ll tell you one that I learned a lot from in a very short amount of time: Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts. I learned a lot from him in just a single promo. In a single promo, I learned how a guy can basically cut your legs, but if you’re strong as a character, you can stand up to that. But if you weren’t, he was going to move past you.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
