Cody Speaks On Zack Ryder & Heath Slater Potentially Joining AEW
It takes more than friendship to score an AEW contract, apparently.
Fans of Zack Ryder and Heath Slater may need to wait a while to see either man become All Elite.
This is according to AEW Executive Vice President Cody, who spoke about the matter during an Instagram Live stream earlier this week. Here's what he had to say on Ryder (h/t Fightful):-
“Zack Ryder is the best. He’s got over two million followers on Twitter and over a million followers on Instagram. Very broad influence, incredibly famous, more famous than many guys out there. But that doesn’t always translate. The biggest hurdle he’ll face is his friendship with me. He’s one of my only really close friends in wrestling. Maybe my only friend in wrestling. I have my brother (in AEW), I have my beautiful wife, and they all do the work. This can’t be All Friends Wrestling. You have to handle it the best way. If you put on the Nightmare Family jacket, you’ve got a massive bullseye on your back, just in the locker-room alone. It’s a total heat seeker. But I’m looking forward to what he does next. He’ll turn a lot of heads. I think and hope our paths will cross down the road. He’s just entering wrestler prime. Men’s wrestler prime is 35 to 40.”
Mentioning the "bullseye on your back in the locker-room" makes it tough to take this entirely on face value, though it's unlikely that AEW will reach out to many released talents at the moment, having lost a huge chunk of their revenue thanks to the ongoing global health crisis.
On potentially signing Heath Slater, Cody was a lot more straightforward:-
"Nope. No on Heath Slater."
Poor guy. Doesn't Cody know he's got kids?