Swerve Strickland Opens Up On Feud With AEW Star

AEW

Swerve Strickland has opened up on his feud with an AEW star.

On the January 27 edition of AEW Rampage, Swerve Strickland and Mogul Affiliates confronted a returning Dustin Rhodes. After a hostile exchange with Swerve bringing up Dustin’s family, both men were separated.

Appearing on Fightful’s The Wrestling Perspective Podcast, Strickland was asked about his feud with Dustin Rhodes.

Without going into full detail, Swerve shared some of his thought process on the rivalry. He stated:

“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.”

Swerve continued on to explain on how he plans to get to Rhodes and how he plans on using Mogul Affiliates to get his message across, saying:

“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.”

Strickland concluded by explaining what the fans should expect from him and his group, saying:

“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.”

Transcription via Fightful

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• Swerve Strickland
• Dustin Rhodes
• Feud
• AEW

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