ROH World Champion Cody Rhodes Talks About 2017 Being His Most Successful Year, Current State Of Wrestling, Wanting His Own Attitude Era, and More

ROH World Champion Cody Rhodes was a guest on Busted Open Radio on Sirius XM Radio. Here are a few highlights from the interview:

On the current wrestling scene: “It’s a wild time to be a pro wrestling fan… I think everything [has] been elevated and the platform that Ring of Honor has given myself, Matt and Nick [Jackson], and New Japan, they’ve let us play our music in our own way and right now people like the song. And I’m very… I don’t know.. I tend to go back and forth. Sometimes I’m a total dreamer, and then other times I’m quite a realist. So I know in wrestling, one day you’re up, and the next day you could be at the bottom of the barrel, down. And we’ve been up, up, up and it continues to trend upward. So I just want to keep it going. Hot Topic. That thing that The Bucks set up with Hot Topic, so many people have benefitted from it, and thats going to be something I hope when you look back at the history books of wrestling, there [are] going to be these moments where things happen, where watershed incidents, where breakaway moments went down, that’s one of those. That has made… hell, that has made a lot of people rich already. So yeah, no. I’m just enjoying the ride, but I still want to make sure we’re still going up here.”

Success in 2017 – “Not to sound tacky, but this has been the first seven-figure year I’ve ever had and it blows me away that it happened. So on that end, for my family and well-being, that part has been the best. But also the part I enjoy the most, the fans and the creative element of what we do, I keep saying it, but to play music how you want to play it, it [has] never been like this before for me. This is superseded… I look at a time, my WWE Intercontinental Championship run as my favorite thing I ever did because I got to change the belt and I got to be involved in a couple of Wrestlemania’s with that in the picture. But this time now has completely passed it by. Blown it away. Being a World Champion is all that it was cracked up to be from every world champion that there ever was that told me about it. It [has] certainly been everything that I dreamed and hoped for.”

Future of Wrestling – new attitude era on the way?: “Wrestling is absolutely hot and getting hotter. [Bully Ray] was involved [but] me, Matt, and Nick weren’t involved in wrestling when it was at it’s hottest in the 90’s, in the Attitude Era. We want our Attitude Era.. and I don’t know what it’s called or what it’s going to be, but it’s heading that direction. So we want to be on the right side of history. We want to be a part of it.”