Cody: How Can You Hire 40 Writers When You Have One Arn Anderson Or Dean Malenko?

AEW has made it no secret that they don’t utilize a writing team like WWE. Cody has stated multiple times that AEW allows talent to “play their music” though Tony Khan has final say and backstage producers have a hand in the layout. 

Speaking on AEW Unrestricted, Cody discussed the value of having someone like Arn Anderson as a backstage producer and how a veteran mind is better than any writer. 

“If you were to look around, as a wrestler putting together a match or as a wrestler thinking about the totality of events over the next few months, that guy…I don’t mean to sound negative but, how you can hire 40 writers when you have one Arn Anderson or one Dean Malenko or one Fit Finlay. That’s where the answers are. You can’t write wrestling, you have to book wrestling. Arn has a brilliant mind for it,” he said.

Earlier in the podcast, Cody discussed his early interactions with Arn and how he was hard on him, but how he needed that at the time. 

“Arn was the agent at WWE when I debuted on TV in 2007. If you have a bad live event outing and Arn put that in the report, you were back in developmental and usually, if you were back to developmental more than once, you were gone. His word was law. He was immensely hard on me. Very out loud, in the ‘go position.’ Positive reinforcement, sure, if we hit a home run, he let us know. But if we didn’t, whew, he let us know. But I needed that. Arn is the guy for telling you what you’re doing wrong.”

Anderson was fired by WWE after nearly 20 years of being a road agent in February 2019 after he reportedly let Alicia Fox wrestle while intoxicated. He was signed by AEW shortly after his release.

Not only does Arn help out behind the scenes, but he is also the coach for Cody on AEW television. 

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