Why Major Cody Rhodes Win Was A Trick By WWE
It seems there was more than meets the eye to WWE having Cody Rhodes win the 2024 Royal Rumble despite knowing The Rock wanted a WrestleMania main event against Roman Reigns.
Cody Rhodes defeated Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 40 but things were nearly very different.
The Rock returned to WWE in early 2024 and with him finally back in the fold, it seemed like he would get his long-discussed WrestleMania showdown with Roman Reigns. But that didn’t sit well with WWE fans who wanted to see Cody Rhodes finish his story.
WWE has now released a behind-the-scenes documentary on WrestleMania 40 with The Rock and Triple H both appearing to discuss what really happened and why ultimately The Rock was out and Cody Rhodes was back in for WrestleMania.
Triple H confirmed that on the afternoon of the Royal Rumble he told Cody Rhodes that The Rock looked like he was coming back for a match with Roman Reigns, but despite that WWE still had Rhodes win the men’s Rumble and immediately after that win Rhodes pointed to Reigns in the crowd making it very clear who he wanted at WrestleMania and signalling to fans to throw their support behind Rhodes – and that might have been by design.
Cody Rhodes Had Support In WWE
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer discussed the documentary and noted that he believes Cody Rhodes winning the men’s Royal Rumble despite knowing about The Rock’s involvement was a trick to stop The Final Boss getting Roman Reigns at WrestleMania:
That was a trick right. There were many people who did not want Roman Reigns and The Rock and Cody winning the Rumble was obviously put there…
What ended up happening when [CM] Punk hurt his tricep was Cody winning the Rumble and they never went into the idea that when Punk got hurt, Cody was gonna wrestle Seth [Rollins] because that was the plan for like three or four days. And they didn’t talk at all about – the original idea was to injure Cody to get out [of the Roman Reigns match], he would get his championship match later.
Cody was always going to, in theory, get the the win but there was a chance [The Rock] would beat Roman. That was also talked about and that would have screwed Cody but I think everyone was fighting against that. But there was so many things going on behind the scenes.
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