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Controversial WrestleMania 39 Decision Was Roman Reigns’ Call

By John Canton • Published Dec 30, 2025 13:00 EST
Roman Reigns

There is more information about what happened in the Roman Reigns-Cody Rhodes WrestleMania 39 and how Reigns may have influenced the outcome.

When Cody Rhodes won the 2023 WWE Royal Rumble, it set him up on a path to challenge Roman Reigns in the main event of WrestleMania 39 for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. At the time, Reigns had been the Universal Champion for 945 days, and it was one year earlier when he added the WWE Title to his collection.

Many people went into that WrestleMania 39 match thinking Cody Rhodes would end Roman’s lengthy title reign, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Solo Sikoa cheapshotted Cody with the Samoan Spike, and Reigns hit a Spear to retain his title.

Creatively speaking, WWE was being run by the Chief Content Officer, Paul “Triple H” Levesque, but Vince McMahon was back in the mix as the Chairman of the company after unretiring in January 2023.

A report from Brandon Thurston of PostWrestling about the ongoing Delaware shareholder lawsuit revealed that Vince was still involved with the company creatively, even though WWE President Nick Khan made a claim on television that he wasn’t involved.

The new court filings obtained from Thurston shared that Vince McMahon was a catalyst for WWE changing the WrestleMania 39 plans from Cody Rhodes beating Roman Reigns to Roman keeping his titles.

On February 28th, 2023, Vince McMahon texted Nick Khan about WrestleMania’s Creative plans. McMahon to Paul Levesque and WWE Creative Director Bruce Prichard said: “Hey guys just double checking. Does Roman [Reigns] and Cody [Rhodes] know the new creative re [WrestleMania] and next year?”

Prichard responded: “Not to my knowledge. I don’t know if Paul has had a conversation with either. Roman’s first appearance since we spoke is Friday in DC. Both will be there in person.”

McMahon asked Levesque: “Paul have U?”

Khan responded with “Langis,” which led to McMahon asking, “What in the blue hell is ‘Langis’ lol,” Khan replied, “Read it backwards!”

The term “Langis” backwards is Signal, which is a messenger app, so it was likely a case of Khan telling McMahon to use Signal instead of sending text messages.

Roman Reigns Suggested WrestleMania 39 Main Event Change To Vince McMahon

While many fans were disappointed that Cody Rhodes failed to beat Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 39, one year later at WrestleMania 40, Cody “finished the story” by becoming the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion for the first time in his career, and he put an end to Roman’s reign at 1,316 days.

Of course, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes stories about that as well, since WWE nearly changed it to The Rock facing Roman Reigns, but they pivoted when the fans voiced their concerns with that idea because they wanted to see Cody get the win. WWE even produced a documentary about the WrestleMania 40 creative process featuring Triple H, Reigns, Rhodes, Rock and others.

Also, by April 2024, Vince had sold WWE to Endeavor, and Vince was also removed from WWE in January 2024 after a scandalous lawsuit.

Regarding WrestleMania 39 and the Roman Reigns-Cody Rhodes match, Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio confirmed it was The Tribal Chief’s idea that Vince approved.

“It was Roman Reigns’ call. Vince had to approve it, but Roman Reigns was the one who went to Vince with the idea and pitched the idea that it would be better, it would be more meaningful if he didn’t win the first time, we’d do a bigger one the second time, and, you know, explained it. I think Heyman with Reigns did that. I think they were very persuasive.”

“You know, I think the argument’s very strong with the benefit of hindsight that they were right because the second year was much bigger than the first year. But it was Vince’s, Vince made the call, and Levesque was on board with the call, but Vince was the one who made the call. So yes, Vince was the one who had final say at that point.”

“You know, he had final say the whole time. He was the chairman of the board again, you know, or whatever. You know, he was in charge of the company and he remained having the final say even though Levesque was in charge of creative. Vince still had the final say until Ari Emanuel removed Vince from having the final say, which was interesting because of the allegation that, you know, and all the things that were said, you know, when the sale went through about how Vince was going to be in charge, and then Ari Emanuel did remove him and did put Levesque in complete charge of creative.”

As for the future, a third Roman Reigns-Cody Rhodes singles match at WrestleMania could happen at WrestleMania 42 in Las Vegas in April, but nothing is official yet.