The Rock & Roman Reigns Set Infamous WWE YouTube Record
The Rock and Roman Reigns have set a record for WWE, but it’s not something the company should be proud of.
In the main event of WWE Smackdown in Birmingham, Roman Reigns was in the ring bragging about being the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion. That led to 2024 Royal Rumble winner Cody Rhodes doing a promo in the ring with Reigns, which is what WWE advertised going into the show.
While many fans watching at home likely expected Cody to challenge Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Title at Wrestlemania 40, Cody didn’t say that. Instead, Cody said that while he wants Roman’s title and he is coming for Roman’s title, Cody won’t be challenging Reigns at WrestleMania 40.
That led to The Rock making a surprise appearance where he walked down to the ring, hugged Cody, and said something into his ear. Cody left the ring as Rock stared at his cousin Roman Reigns as Smackdown went off the air. It was not officially announced that Rock will face Reigns at WrestleMania 40, but it was certainly implied.
It has since been reported that The Rock facing Roman Reigns is largely due to Rock wanting the spot against Reigns. Since Rock is on the TKO Board of Directors now, he wields a lot of power in WWE and essentially, what Rock wants, Rock can get.
After WWE’s television shows, the company likes to post highlights on YouTube and sometimes even the whole segment. After Smackdown aired, WWE posted the entire Reigns-Cody-Rock segment on YouTube and it has set a record for the number of dislikes on a WWE YouTube video.
According to WrestleOps, the Rock/Reigns segment has over 400,000 dislikes on YouTube and 83,000 Likes, so that means the Dislikes are about 5x more than the Likes. It has also done 3.2 million views in about 20 hours, which is incredible.
What’s significant about that number of Dislikes is that it is by far the record on WWE’s YouTube channel, which is a massive channel with nearly 100 million subscribers.
The Dislike counts are no longer visible on YouTube after the company chose to hide those stats in late 2021, but the numbers can still be seen via browser add-ons such as Return YouTube Dislike.
WWE Fans Want Cody Rhodes Against Roman Reigns Not The Rock
In another example of WWE fans not being happy about the likely Rock-Reigns match, popular wrestling reporter Sean Ross Sapp of Fightul put up a poll on X/Twitter asking fans if they want to see Reigns against Rock or Reigns against Rhodes.
The poll results show that 82% of voters were in favor of Cody facing Roman in a rematch from last year.
It’s important to note that WWE has yet to officially announce any WrestleMania 40 match other than WWE Women’s Champion IYO SKY defending her title against Bayley. However, there is a WrestleMania 40 Kickoff press conference this Thursday in Las Vegas where it’s likely that some of the big WrestleMania matches will be made official.