From the outside, it seemed pretty clear that WWE changed their plans for Roman Reigns, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Cody Rhodes in response to backlash from fans after Royal Rumble winner Rhodes seemingly gave The Rock the WrestleMania main event he’d earned with Reigns on the Feb. 2 SmackDown.
Reporting since they officially course-corrected at last week’s WrestleMania XL Kickoff confirms that notion, and the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter has the most detailed account of what happened yet.
Dave Meltzer writes that after the negative response to the end of the Feb. 2 show, it was The Rock who said he should be out of the Reigns match so Rhodes could be slotted back in. It sounds like everyone else had already figured that out, but it still probably took Johnson — who just days before had been named to the Board of Directors of WWE’s parent company, TKO Group — officially agreeing to drop the match he’d come back for.
Johnson also pitched his own heel turn, and the idea of a Roman & Rock vs. Rhodes & Seth Rollins tag match for night one, although it’s still not clear if that match will happen or if future twists & turns in the story will take that idea off the table.
The big question that remains is why WWE booked Cody to win the Rumble in the first place if they knew Johnson was doing the Reigns match at WrestleMania this year. We’d previously heard that Rhodes warned company official they wouldn’t get a positive reaction to his scene with The Rock on SmackDown. Now the Observer Newsletter makes it seem like head of creative Paul “Triple H” Levesque knew that too.
Meltzer’s heard that Triple H “scrambled behind the scenes” to keep Rhodes involved. At one point he wanted to shoot an angle for the Feb. 2 show that would see The Bloodline injure Cody to set-up The Rock being announced as his replacement at the press conference in Vegas. In that scenario, Rhodes would return later to finish his story and win the belt from Roman after WrestleMania.
Perhaps that’s something we’ll get more insight into in the future. Meltzer writes that “there is said to be far more behind the scenes that hasn’t come out but given the timing can’t be talked about now”, which is pretty cryptic even for a wrestling rumor report. Another possibility is that WWE is being extra tight-lipped about future story developments, like whatever Roman is teasing for SmackDown tonight (Feb. 16).
Guess we’ll just have to see what the “long gamers” have planned, and what the dirt sheets tell us about it afterwards.
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