Is WWE Aware Of Fan Backlash Regarding WrestleMania 40 Plans?

The reaction of WWE fans has been strong about potential WrestleMania 40 matches and a new report reveals the company is apparently very aware of it.

It’s been a weekend full of WWE fans talking about what happened at the end of SmackDown in Birmingham, Alabama.

Cody Rhodes, who is a Raw superstar, was on Smackdown as the Royal Rumble winner and it appeared as though he was going to challenge Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Title at WrestleMania 40. It would have been the highly anticipated WrestleMania rematch.

During Cody’s speech toward Reigns, he surprisingly said he wasn’t going to challenge Reigns at WrestleMania even though he said that he wanted to hold the title that Reigns had.

That led to The Rock making a surprise appearance. Rock shook Cody’s hand, hugged him and Cody left. That led to a Rock staredown with Reigns, which suggests that a Reigns-Rock dream match is planned for WrestleMania 40 in Philadelphia.

While there is no official match announced yet, fans at a WWE live event in Knoxville on Saturday night booed the Smackdown highlights when The Rock was shown. Meanwhile, the phrase #WeWantCody has been trending on Twitter/X all weekend and was a top trending topic on most of Saturday.

In another example of WWE fans hating the idea of Rock taking Cody’s spot, the video of the main event of Smackdown is the most disliked videos in WWE YouTube history with over half a million dislikes.

The Rock is beloved by WWE fans, but they have also flooded his social media accounts with negative comments about taking Cody’s spot. The reason that The Rock is getting “heat” is because it has been reported that he has a lot of say in WWE booking matters for WrestleMania 40 due to his role on the TKO Board of Directors.

Can WWE Change Plans Due To Fan Reaction?

It’s a situation that has led to fans being reminded of WrestleMania 30 in 2014 when Batista won the Royal Rumble instead of Daniel Bryan. The fans booed Batista and were clamoring for Bryan to get the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 30. Eventually, figured out a way to get out of it, Bryan was inserted into the WrestleMania 30 WWE Title match and Bryan celebrated as the champion to end the night.

Whether WWE changes plans is unknown right now, but PWInsider’s Mike Johnson answered in a Q&A on his website that WWE is monitoring the situation.

“It’s live TV every single week. They can change direction any time they want and pivot to something different, including the original Cody vs. Roman plan. Whether they actually do remain to be seen. My gut is that we’ll see Rock vs. Roman but it’s always possible Rock and/or WWE management will see the negative responses and seek to prevent that from getting worse. We’ll see.”

“I know that WWE was absolutely monitoring the responses.”

Next up for WWE is Monday Night Raw on February 5th where the crowd could react strongly to support Rhodes. After that it’s a WrestleMania 40 Kickoff press event where it’s expected that WWE will announce some WrestleMania 40 matches.