Kenny Omega Compliments Cody Rhodes For His Work As AEW EVP

Kenny Omega has opened up about what it was like when AEW was launching while praising fellow EVPs Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks.

When AEW launched as a pro wrestling company in January 2019, they immediately announced that Cody Rhodes and The Young Bucks would be Executive Vice Presidents in the promotion. A few months later, Kenny Omega joined as an EVP after his NJPW contract ended.

While AEW is funded by Tony Khan and his father Shahid, there likely wouldn’t even be a promotion if not for Omega, Rhodes and The Young Bucks (Nick & Matt Jackson).

In September 2018, Cody and The Elite trio put on a show called All In in Chicago using their own money. It ended up being a huge success with over 10,000+ tickets sold and it is what led to AEW being formed by Khan.

During an appearance on the Swerve City podcast hosted by AEW’s Swerve Strickland, Monteasy, & Rich Latta, Kenny Omega talked about what it was like to start AEW while praising Cody for knowing what AEW needed.

“The fourth EVP, we can’t mention his name. Just kidding, it’s Cody. He really…I will assume this is just from knowledge of being in the business all his life because he was born into the business and he understood a lot from his father. He knew what we needed. He knew what we needed to line up and the things that I couldn’t get.”

“I’ve got good contacts for any unsigned Japanese talent that you guys need, I can be that guy. The Bucks would be like, ‘we know great guys from So Cal or Indie guys.’ Cody is like, ‘Okay, cool, how about this guy and this guy.’ We’d have a list of talent and put them together.”

Kenny Omega continued talking about how Cody would point out things that were needed.

“Then, Cody is like, ‘What are we going to do about medical staffing?’ Oh, right, we need that too. We should have doctors. ‘I have a contact for Doc Sampson.’ That’s probably not going to be enough, so I had a dude named Bryce (Ready). I thought, ‘Hey man, I know you’ve taken care of some of our guys and you really love wrestling, would you be able to take a full-time opportunity to do that?’ We got trainers through that. ‘What else do we need?’”

“We needed producers for TV, guys that actually have experience doing wrestling production. That was a Cody thing. ‘I can get in touch with this guy.’ The Bucks maybe knew a guy. At the beginning, just to build that small infrastructure, which we didn’t have, when you start checking names off the box, you think you’re there but you’re not because we were so understaffed at the beginning.”

“Even to this day, I can confidently say, we can use an extra trainer or two. The tables are always busy. We could have a couple of gophers in case we’re running low on certain things and materials. As things go, you naturally require more people to keep things running.”

While Cody is not in AEW because he returned to WWE in 2022, he is set for the biggest match of his life in the main event of WrestleMania 39. As for Kenny Omega, apparently WWE is interested in signing him if he becomes available.