AEW Executive Vice President Cody Rhodes will be releasing a new children’s book on Monday, July 15 via Amazon and bookstores nationwide.

This will be the second book in “The Elite Team” series from Trism Books, and will retail for $16.95. Titled “Cody Heart of the Mountain,” the book comes eight months after “Young Bucks Stand Tall” was released, written by The Young Bucks.

Below is the full announcement on the book along with comments from Cody and book signing dates:

CODY RHODES INSPIRES NEXT GENERATION WITH CHILDREN’S BOOK THAT CHAMPIONS TEAMWORK— “Cody Heart of the Mountain” is Second Book in The Elite Team Series, Available July 15 on Amazon & Bookstores Nationwide —

CHICAGO, IL (July 10, 2019) – Within seven months of successfully launching All Elite Wrestling, EVP Cody Rhodes today added a new title to his impressive repertoire – Children’s Author. Cody Heart of the Mountain, the second book in “The Elite Team” series, will be available on Monday, July 15, on Amazon and anywhere books are sold including Barnes & Noble, Target and Indiebound.

Cody Heart of the Mountain teaches children that everyone has unique abilities, even their perceived enemies. By working together, readers learn they can overcome obstacles to unite the world. The engaging tale takes young readers on a sci-fi journey where nothing is as it seems. While camping in the wilderness, Cody and the Elite Team (Matt & Nick Jackson, Brandi Rhodes, Hangman Adam Page, Kenny Omega), fall under Claw Mountain’s powerful spell. The friends take on bear and wolf qualities as two rival groups form. Divided by mistrust and jealousy, Cody must find a way to lead the team back together. Will the friends be able to work together and embrace their differences in order to break the spell?

“When I was eight years old, I went camping with my family, and my Dad told me that if I woke up early enough he would take me to see the bears who lived on the adjacent mountain,” said Cody Rhodes. “According to him, I never woke up early enough (wink wink). But, I never really needed to see the bears because he would tell me a version of the story in this book as a bedtime story many times. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend, right? Bringing this story to life was a labor of love. It was truly special watching Dylan Coburn masterfully bring the words to life as well as working with Trism Books to provide a positive message to children and adults alike. I hope you enjoy.”

Published by Trism Books, Cody Heart of the Mountain will retail for $16.95. The book comes eight months after Young Bucks Stand Tall, which follows brothers Nick and Matt Jacksonthrough an inspiring story that encourages young readers to follow their dreams.

Cody will be signing his book in-person at the following locations over the upcoming weeks:

• July 14: 12pm-1pm @ Barnes & Noble in Jacksonville, FL

• St. Johns Town Center, 10280 Midtown Parkway, Jacksonville

• July 19: 6pm-7pm @ Dave and Buster’s in Marietta, GA o 2215 D and B Dr SE, Marietta Click here for more.

• August 29: 12pm-2pm @ Pro Wrestling Tees in Chicago, IL

Source: Wrestling Inc.

It was reported earlier this year that Cody Rhodes has filed to trademark the “Bash at the Beach” name. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has given an initial refusal to the application because of the likely confusion with WWE’s registered trademark for “The Bash” for an old pay-per-view.

Cody’s trademark application for “Dusty Rhodes” was also given an initial refusal by the USPTO because of the likely confusion to the “Dustin Rhodes” trademark that’s registered to his brother, Dustin Runnels.

The USPTO did approve Cody’s other trademark applications for Bunkhouse Stampede, BattleBowl, The American Nightmare, The American Dream, and The Prince of Wrestling. They will be published for opposition at a later date.

Source: Wrestling Inc.

As we previously reported, All Elite Wrestling and WarnerMedia officially announced today that AEW will air live on TNT later this year. WarnerMedia will be providing exclusive multi-platform access for fans to watch AEW events, airing live weekly matches on TNT in prime time, as well as streaming them through WarnerMedia’s B/R Live and on pay-per-view.

Cody Rhodes spoke to Variety about the big announcement and discussed his own ten-year run with WWE. Rhodes admitted that while he liked his time with WWE, he felt that “it wasn’t wrestling.” AEW has promised to focus on producing fast-paced, high-impact matches and have less less scripted and soapy drama. AEW stated that wrestlers will also be given more freedom to explore their characters and highlight their athletic abilities.

“[As] much as I say [WWE] was a wonderful job, it wasn’t wrestling,” Rhodes admitted. “That’s something I’ve learned a lot about, the grittiness and the sports-centric element of the industry that doesn’t exist really anywhere else currently. We have the opportunity to seize that.”

WWE Co-President George Barrios was asked this week if WWE considered AEW to be competition. Barrios said that they did, just like they consider the NBA and Kung Fu novels to be competition, because they are all “fighting for people’s time.” Rhodes talked about AEW being a competitor to WWE, and said that it is best for both parties.

“Competition raises everybody’s game,” Rhodes said. “It will raise the wrestlers’ game, the creative people’s game, everybody. Everybody feels a sense of urgency when someone is competing with them.”

“Competitive means being profitable,” he continued. “It doesn’t mean, ‘We have to have this to beat the WWE.’ Our job is not to worry about what WWE is doing, not their TV clearances, not whose in the main event, nothing. With a growing company there are a lot of growing pains. It’s a mix of creative and athletics and a lot of different things. Our focus has to be us, period.”

AEW also officially revealed that they will be presenting statistics by tracking each competitor’s wins and losses, analyzing their moves, assessing damage to their opponents, and providing insights into their winning streaks.

“One thing we really strongly want to present is wins and losses mattering again in pro wrestling. That takes more than the W and the L column,” Rhodes said. “We’re talking about percentage of times someone loses to this particular maneuver, percentages against somebody of this height, a whole by-the-numbers approach that really intrigues me. It’s not a cornerstone of AEW necessarily but it’s a great peripheral element we’re working on and that’s going to be exclusive to us.”

No official date has been announced regarding when the show will start airing on TNT. B/R Live will exclusively stream AEW Double Or Nothing on Saturday, May 25th, while the hour-long live pre-show special, The Buy-In, will stream on WarnerMedia and AEW’s social channels.

Source: Wrestling Inc.

We’re less than one month away from AEW’s first official event, Double or Nothing. The startup promotion is still going through its growth phase and that means adding new talent to the roster.

Cody joined Jim Ross on The Ross Report to talk about the new guys and girls who will fill out the AEW roster.

“I know from a talent number we are nearing 40 talents under a certain type of contract with us. So, there is more talent than a lot of people know, because you know, slow and steady on our road to Double or Nothing on May 25th ,” said Cody. “We don’t want to just put a splash page down on everybody. We want you to slowly learn about them. That is the biggest thing for me; the road to Double or Nothing series that I put on the Nightmare Family YouTube channel, where we also announced your [Jim Ross] arrival. And even those that know you [Jim Ross] so well for so many years I still wanted to treat it like it is everyone’s first day, and tell me who this is, which is especially helpful to the guys with these younger guys.

While Cody is no Vince McMahon in terms of being fascinated with wrestlers’ physiques, he did reveal that those in charge at AEW went on a “hoss hunt.” They are looking for wrestlers 6’2″ and above who can turn heads with their looks and also perform in the ring.

“We went on this big hoss hunt and we want to find some big boys,” stated Cody. “You can’t replace that if that makes any sense? If you see one of those guys or girls that walk by an airport that makes you turn your head, that is still a part of wrestling – that going to the circus scene and you look at them and say, ‘damn, what do you do?’ I believe that is going to help us. We have a young and light-heavyweight roster, but to add that buffet to big, bigger, I want it all.”

Even though many of Cody’s friends such as The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega hold executive positions, that doesn’t mean all of his friends are going to just be given jobs. He talked about having to say no to many of his friends who came knocking on his door.

“I don’t know if I had a hard time to say no as much as I have been able to say that the door is unlocked, but it’s kind of up to them to kick the door down,” admitted Cody. “The best example of all that is when I left WWE, I did that full year before I fully signed on for one year with Ring of Honor. I did a full year of every indie under the sun. The best one, the worst one, the most niche one, the most mom and pop, I did all of that. That is the type of thing that kind of thing that helped me gravitate towards Matt and Nick Jackson and getting into New Japan and the first Tokyo Dome show I did and things of that nature.”

Cody didn’t just rest on his laurels or his family connections to get where he is today, he worked his tail off. He wants the same from AEW talent and, in a way, he echoes Vince McMahon in that he wants prospective AEW talent to grab the brass ring.

“People know what opportunities exist and it all lies on putting in the work,” said Cody. “You have to put in the work, and I swear by that. My wife is the same way. In this era of entertainment in general; content is king. It’s no longer, ‘oh this great show is coming on and has a great marketing appeal, and it’s all marketing.’ Now the sizzle and the substance have to match otherwise you get a big drop-off and we want our sizzle and substance to match. To answer your question, it hasn’t been hard to say no because most people know to not ask unless they are out there doing the work. It hasn’t been hard for me yet.”

Along the lines of his gimmick, AEW strives for only elite talent. Thus, Cody says that many current WWE performers wouldn’t even be accepted into AEW.

“Honestly, I’ve kind of jokingly said that it is five percent and I’m talking Jim Ross, Cody Rhodes and Chris Jericho, maybe a few others,” Cody replied on the percentage of WWE talent that would be accepted in AEW. “It’s not the same. Having that equity with WWE is wonderful, but like I have been talking, you have to be able to cut it and meet the standard that people have into their bell-to-bell contest. That number may increase, being that this opportunity that exists for the boys and girls to make more money, whether here [AEW] or there [WWE], for the boys and girls to have options. That number may increase.

“If they can play, they are going to play, but right now the recruitment was more about…I use the term ‘Tier 1.’ It was more about freshness, if that makes sense. I want to build a new class of guys. I have been there before where nobody has my back, nobody is my ally, and I don’t want to get into sour grapes over it but I know that it is one of the things that I look forward to the most once we really get into the schedule is the fact that these fresh faces…take Darby Allin for example who was just announced. I don’t want them to feel like they were set up and that was it. I want them to feel that they were set up to win and set up to succeed and then they went out there and hit it out of the park, so yeah.

“WWE at the moment I would say five percent at the current makeup, and that may increase. But right now there are a lot of faces you have never seen, and a lot of people you would be surprised once you do see them.”

Source: Wrestling Inc.