Swerve Strickland is ready to show fans a different side to his character with his new Dustin Rhodes feud.
The AEW star and former tag champion spoke about his beef with The Natural during his recent appearance on The Wrestling Perspective podcast, where the Mogul Affiliates leader promised to use Rhodes’ pain against him. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Where things will be going with his feud with Dustin Rhodes:
There’s only so much of this question I can answer, because there are a lot of seeds. I want to plant for the future, I’ll maneuver correctly here. Honestly, for me personally, what I like to operate off of is his pain and going by the timing of Dustin with his family and everything. There’s a lot of pain there, and with that being said, pain can be manipulative. On the outside, you can take that and weaponize it, just like love. Love can be weaponized, and I think like that’s what cinema is. We weaponize emotion, and especially with seeing where his brother [Cody Rhodes] was to go over this past weekend. I’m like that’s another emotion we can tap into.
Says he plans to weaponize Rhodes’ pain:
We can weaponize that too, and it got trickling down to connecting dots and people, targeting pain, weaponizing it, and emotion. Oh man, you see this guy sad on his luck right now. He’s not feeling good, but you’re in my way, move, you’re in my way. Why do you want to talk to him like that? Because I’m sick of it, I don’t care, I have the authority now. My ego has the authority now, because I have people with me. So, some people understand that situation. Okay, even if I confront someone like Dustin who can hold his own with anybody, he still has to second guess and stop to think about the situation he’s in. Because of the guys, those entities around me, and that’s weaponizing his pain.
Tells fans to keep a close eye over the next couple of weeks:
Over these next couple of weeks, I would advise people to pay attention to how I play with these things. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but that’s the beauty of it. That’s to me, that’s the fun of it. I don’t want to think about it. I wanna go off the feel of it, I want to just come to work that day and be like, oh, I got something and it just popped into my head as we’re performing. This is how I’m going to hit you, and that’s where the fun is, and that’s where the confidence comes from. Because now I’m in the field and I’m in the fun of it, so I know it’s going to work.
Full interview can be found below.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
