Cody Rhodes topped the PWI 500 list in September of last year, while former AEW World Champion Swerve Strickland secured the second position.
During a recent appearance on “Vlad TV,” Swerve revealed that Rhodes reached out to him via text after the list was released, stating that he believed Swerve should hold the top spot.
Strickland said, “I’m still friends with him. When [the list] came out, I texted him, I was like, I missed you by one, you son of a bi*ch.’ [Laughs] He texts me back, he’s like, ‘Honestly, dude, you should have been one.’ That’s the competition we have between, it’s a good one. I was like, ‘Ah, I wanted to beat you so bad.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah.’”
During a recent appearance on the “Insight” podcast, Cedric Alexander discussed his future in wrestling and expressed his desire to join The Hurt Syndicate in AEW.
Alexander was previously part of the group when it was called The Hurt Business in WWE.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On his WWE release: “Everything’s fine. You know, once I got that news, I wasn’t even mad. I kind of felt like a pressure was lifted off my shoulders. Oh wow, I’m free to do other things, cool, all right, let’s see what happens. I was expecting to be angry and frantic. Actually, funny enough they called Friday night. I was in the middle of a leg workout. I’m doing squats, and my phone starts ringing. So I put the weight down, because I have a gym in my house so for me I’m just working out all hours of the day. So I pick up the phone, and I received the dreaded 203 number. I’m like, Okay, what’s gonna happen? I don’t remember the guy’s name. I think he said it was Will from TR. And I was like, Yeah, sure. What’s up? He goes, ‘Sorry, we’re gonna release you from your contract.’ My initial reaction was okay, cool. He goes, ‘Yeah, sorry to get this news on a Friday.’ So I had an NXT house show tomorrow, so I don’t do that anymore. That was my first question, too. He goes, No, you’re all good, just the 90 days and if you need anything else let us know. I was like, okay, cool.”
On his reaction and if he expected it: “I wasn’t expecting it, but it was the thing of I wasn’t surprised. I guess I kind of saw the writing on the wall after a while. So I immediately thought to myself when I was released, I was like, Okay, that’s a job. Wrestling is my career. I may be out of a job, but I still have a career. All thanks to [Mustafa] Ali, he’s one of the guys that called me within the hour of me being released and was immediately like, hey dude, it’s all good. Just being super positive as you know Ali is, but yeah man, it sucked because it’s a dream job. It’s one of those jobs that I’m a kid and I’m like oh my God, I’m gonna wrestle for WWE. Then when it ends, it just ends. You just move on.”
On what’s next: “I felt like I was completely started all over again, because I don’t know what’s wrestling outside of WWE for the last eight and a half years. Who’s hot on the indies? I don’t really know that much anymore, who’s a good place to get work? I am just completely lost, because being in WWE for nearly a decade, eight and a half years, you’re like okay, I don’t have to do anything, bookings just come to you, you get paid, and it’s like you almost get complacent because you’re like, Oh, something will pop up. They have all my booking information. They’ll put me in something eventually.”
On if he wants to join the Hurt Syndicate: “100%. That’s a big chapter of my career that I really felt was never fully explored and I think it’ll be great to finish that out.”
