AEW’s Cody Rhodes recently sat down with NY Post to discuss his upcoming match against Shaquille O’Neal. Check out some highlights from the conversation below.
On the impact that Shaq will have on AEW:
The power of Shaq, when you have one of these like very, very iconic all-American brands it can’t be understated. For me, that’s really, really exciting. I hope they love everything that he does and they love everything that we do, but perhaps find somebody who they wouldn’t have known if this is their first foray into wrestling that they fall in love with as well who’s not in our match. That’s one of the beautiful things of the rub of and the power of somebody like Shaq.
On how the match came to be:
What happened is really what fans saw. He tweeted about me (in August 2020) and didn’t, I don’t think, particularly know me. He just knew he had a show on TNT and we had seen each other at the upfronts and “Dynamite” was kicking ass and I think he chose an in-house professional wrestler to pick on. Then the next you know, QT Marshall calls me like half a year ago, so this is a while ago. He called me and said, ‘Hey, I just want to make you aware of something.’ When that’s how he frames it, I know it’s going to be something about the Nightmare Factory. He said, ‘I just want to make you aware of it that Shaq came in and started training.’ I said, ‘well send me a video, I’ve got to see it.’ He’s done a good amount of training with QT with a couple bodies there that he can throw around and things of that nature.
On how long Shaq has been training for the upcoming match:
I don’t have a lot of interaction with him. I know when he trains it’s very long. They put in over two hours. They go from the weight room to the ring and two to three of our better guys bump around, training themselves and want to be there. They’re there almost all night. I’ve never trained with him. He’s very much been trained by QT. They train pretty regularly and I’m excited. The only thing I’ve been thinking of in my mind is I wrestled Big Show so many times. He was just one of the most valuable teachers to me. He was everything. He was a genuine adversary when it came to how he handled going to WrestleMania. He was my first taste of good politics, bad politics, and he was an angel in the ring to wrestle with. It gave me some absolute valuable lessons. So thinking about Show a lot as I’ve been thinking about Shaq, in any way are they similar.
Check out the entire interview here. Are you looking forward to seeing Shaq in the ring? Let us know in the comments below.
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