Cody Rhodes says AEW does not have a “focus group”

One of the Executive Vice-Presidents of All Elite Wrestling, Cody Rhodes, has confirmed that AEW has no focus group for promos.

Rhodes was recently in the news for stating on GameSpot’s podcast, Wrestle Buddies, that AEW has focus groups for his promos after being questioned on how he works on them.

"“I workshop my promos heavily for weeks on end. We have a full focus group for them, as crazy as that sounds. This is a data-based company, so I workshop everything I do. And because my promos have been held to a really high standard—people pick at them and find things in them and they put a microscope on them, which I love.”"

Cody Rhodes says there is no “focus group” for his promos

He has since retracted those statements. During the most recent AEW Media Call, the former TNT and NWA World Heavyweight Champion clarified that AEW does not have a focus group and that he misinterpreted the situation.  

"“I will chalk this up to me not knowing what the term ‘focus group’ means. I woke up, this morning, to a very large amount of people on my mentions, almost all of them with a Roman (Reigns) or a Sasha Banks avatar, making fun of me for using the term ‘focus group’. I did not ‘focus group’ this promo. What I intended to say, but I did not say correctly so chalk this up to me being a dummy, is that I work on my promos very hard. A lot of the old-timers who said ‘I am just doing it on the fly’, I would say that they work on those very hard, whether that be in the gym or whether that be in the car looking in the rearview. When it comes to my promos, the process is, usually, I voice memo it out to the people I trust the most. To the legends of our industry, some coaches, and some members of management and see what they think. But, absolutely not, there is no AEW Focus Group.”"

Rhodes’ promo on Anthony Ogogo and the state of the United States drew a hefty amount of criticism from many people on the internet, including Daily DDT’s own Raphael Garcia, for veering deep into nationalism and pivoting the Nightmare Family vs Nightmare Factory Feud into an outdated “America vs. Evil Foreigner” trope without setting any precedent of this on AEW programming prior to the promo.

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