[ad_1]
The latest report on Cody Rhodes stepping aside so Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson can face Roman Reigns in WrestleMania 40 It has a lot of information, but it leaves us with even more questions about what exactly is going on with WWE’s creative plans and behind the scenes at the company.
In the last Wrestling observer radio, Dave Meltzer said that a WrestleMania main event with Reigns was part of Dwayne Johnson’s deal with TKO that made him a member of the Board and gave him full ownership of the name “The Rock.” That deal was apparently made on January 3, and outside of Johnson, WWE president Nick Khan (an old friend of Johnson’s) and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, very few people knew about it.
Those outside the circle could have included Chief Creative Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, as Meltzer has been unable to get anyone to explain why Rhodes was booked to win the Royal Rumble last month, and indicate that he was going to use the victory to once again challenge Reigns at WrestleMania, if The Rock’s main event was agreed upon weeks in advance.
Which makes one wonder about other reports that Endeavor could be looking to clean house of Vince McMahon’s WWE associates in the wake of sexual abuse allegations in Janel Grant’s lawsuit, and that creative partner/ Johnson’s commercial, Brian Gewirtz, could be seen as a replacement for Levesque should Emanuel decide that McMahon’s son-in-law, Levesque, must leave for any reason.
That aspect of the story will likely play out over a longer period of time. More immediately, Meltzer says that WWE plans to do a rematch between Rhodes and Reigns at some point, but not in WrestleMania 40. Regarding that April event in Philadelphia, “everything is in the air, nothing is set in stone.”
On the topic of the backlash to last Friday’s SmackDown scene with Rhodes, Rock & Reigns (which arguably could have been avoided or at least mitigated if Rhodes hadn’t won the Rumble and teased “ending the story” against Roman in Philadelphia), Meltzer says it was mostly what WWE wanted:
“It developed the way they wanted it to develop. The plan as of Friday night was Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes (in WrestleMania 40) and we’ll see how it plays out because now they’re trying to make it into a story and we’ll see how the story goes…
“I don’t know what they expected (in terms of a reaction to The Rock) but they expected Cody Rhodes to become Daniel Bryan, yes.
“They were hoping to turn Cody Rhodes into a martyr and make him a bigger babyface from that. Did you expect people to boo Dwayne? “I don’t know because I asked that and didn’t get a clear answer.”
When his Observer Radio co-host Bryan Alvarez asked if WWE cares if fans reject a Rock/Reigns’ Mania match, Meltzer’s response indicated that the company is confident the match will be a financial success regardless of any outrage from the fans:
“I don’t know how much they care because they’re going to get more attention for this fight than any other they’ve had, they’re going to have more sponsorship income based on the fact that Dwayne fights more than anyone else.” game they’ve had so they can come in and just say, ‘let them boo!’ “It’s the biggest combination of money we can ever achieve and that’s the combination we’re going to achieve.”
If that’s correct, it would seem to be a common theme in how WWE is handling controversies in the real world and the fictional world, as Triple H also chose to focus on the positives instead of addressing the disturbing allegations against McMahon in his mail. –Real battle Press conference.
But this is also just one report in a story with many moving parts. We’ll see what new information emerges in any of those big stories, and how the on-screen story or stories involving The Rock, Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes develop on the road to WrestleMania.