Back in 2019, Cody Rhodes got a lot of people talking when he used a sledgehammer to smash a throne during his entrance at the AEW Double or Nothing pay-per-view, and fans quickly caught on to the Triple H references.
During a recent interview with Inside The Ropes the former TNT Champion said that he wanted to make a statement that night, and he also praised Triple H while saying that The Game is probably his favorite wrestler.
“Triple H is probably my favourite wrestler and was a role model. I only watched from a distance, but he reminded me a lot of my dad in the sense that I watched him do all the work, be this executive, and then go out there—and he was only part-time for the most part other than when I first started and had that run with him and Teddy and Shawn.
He really was a model in terms of, “OK, you can do both, you can do both, but you have to be really disciplined. You have to take it really seriously.” And that doesn’t get you many friends when you’re the Hermione Granger of the company, and you just take it so seriously and are just a little bookworm.”
Cody Rhodes then went on to explain what smashing the throne meant to him personally while adding that he didn’t want to go into the Wednesday Night Wars with the idea that AEW was going to lose.
“But, yeah, I wanted to be clear what we were doing. You mentioned the barbs back and forth—that’s part of what we do. Trash talk is part of what we do, but also when they counter-programmed us for no reason other than to split our audience, I didn’t want to meet that in a cowardly fashion. I wanted to flat out say, “OK, well, great. Our show is still going to be better and as crazy as this is, we’re going to win. So if you want to have this moment in time on Wednesday nights where we put all eyes on wrestling, we’re going to win.”
I don’t want to go into any battle with the idea that we’re going to lose. I’m face-forward in the company on so many things, so I wanted to go in and let them know I am willing to fight.”
Rhodes also noted that Triple H didn’t reach out to him after the spot with the sledgehammer at Double or Nothing, but he did recently reach out to him to congratulate him on his baby.
