Undisputed WWE Champion “The American Nightmare” Cody Rhodes appeared on The Bertcast to discuss various topics, including which modern stars would excel in past eras.
Rhodes said, “Oh, man. I mean, one one guy who’s — we say say his name and he appears. And that’s Joe Hendry who’s not even working for WWE. He works for TNA, he appeared on Wrestlemania solely because the crowd was calling for it. Joe is a very interesting story. I think you’ve actually met Ethan Page. Ethan Page is another, Chelsea Green’s another one. There are people like that, that no matter what they’re handed they’re going to promote it. They’re going to survive. They’re going to make it better. They’re not going to do it out of spite. They would have survived and thrived. Because believe it or not, Ric Flair during his prolific, decades-long run was somebody. He didn’t have all of this, didn’t have these platforms. But he had his own — he was he was digging. He was finding he saw the artistic success to it and he could do it better than anybody… He knew the lanes to go to. So was ahead of his time in terms of reaching out. Maybe he had some friends in the media, and this is not a nefarious thing. He had friendly people in his pocket and it was smart.”
On making “fans for life”:
“I had an old-timer tell me once. Because I would do this thing. WWE hated it at first. Now they try to cleverly avoid me doing it. They also don’t mind when I do it though. I will stay out there all night. Cameras are off, I’ll walk the whole round. I’ll go down the aisle. I’ll go back. I’ll stay out there all night. And I remember one time somebody telling me, ‘Well, that’s important. You know, you you made a fan for life. You sold a ticket for life.’ And — I even though I respected them a great deal, I didn’t say this to them. I knew, ‘That’s the difference between you and me.’ I wasn’t trying to make a fan for life. Maybe I did. Maybe that’s the byproduct of it. But there’s a difference between selling hope and experience, and selling a ticket.”
On the value of selling experience vs. selling a ticket:
“I think that’s the biggest in in this whole game of ticket selling is, it’s like a bad salesman. When you’re just there to sell and the content isn’t king, you’re not going to be able you only sell one time. I remember my my time away from WWE, I remember thinking, ‘These houses are great. DC, 13,000 people!’ But what’s it going to be next time. Guys, we’re going to come back. What’s it going to be next time? It doesn’t mean — there’ll be a drop, sure, but how much will we retain? And to me, I just — I’d rather go down swinging on not trying to sell a ticket versus, ‘Let me sell them an experience.’”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
