Roman Reigns Winning At WrestleMania “Was Always The Plan”

Roman Reigns is still the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion and apparently, that was always the company’s plan for his WrestleMania match with Cody Rhodes.

The WrestleMania 39 main event saw Cody Rhodes challenge Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. Going into the match, many people believed that Cody was the guy to finally end Roman’s 900+ days as Universal Champion and year-long reign as the WWE Champion.

Cody had a storyline that was easy to get behind. After all, he returned to WWE one year earlier at WrestleMania 38 with much fanfare, beat Seth “Freakin” Rollins in a great match, and beat Seth two more times. At Hell in a Cell 2022, Cody did it with a torn pectoral muscle that saw his arm have purple scarring. After a long layoff, Cody came back and won the 2023 Royal Rumble.

At WrestleMania 39, Cody came so close to beating Reigns multiple times. To his credit, Reigns nearly won too. The fans at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles were so into the match, many of them were standing during the entire match and it was so captivating to watch.

After Cody Rhodes hit Roman Reigns with the Cross Rhodes two times in a row, he was going for the same move for a third time. However, Roman’s “Wise Man” Paul Heyman distracted the referee while Solo Sikoa returned to ringside (after being sent away earlier in the match for interfering) and hit Cody with a Samoan Spike. Roman Reigns would go on to hit a Spear for the pinfall win to keep the title and upset a lot of fans.

In the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer wrote this about the WrestleMania 39 main event: “Reigns winning was always the plan, although it was kept secret and almost nobody knew.”

Whether “almost nobody knew” or nobody chose to tell Meltzer is something you can decide, but clearly, WWE tried to keep it quiet.

As for what’s next, Reigns is expected to miss the Backlash PLE on May 6th while Cody has a very dangerous Brock Lesnar problem to deal with.