WWE Plan Cody Rhodes WrestleMania U-Turn After The Rock’s Return
Cody Rhodes remains the great unknown regarding WrestleMania 40 as a match with Roman Reigns appeared to be off but WWE could have indicated that’s what actually will happen.
Cody Rhodes won the 2024 men’s Royal Rumble giving him the chance to challenge for a world title at WrestleMania 40. Immediately after his win, Rhodes indicated he wanted a rematch with Reigns for the WWE Universal Championship in hopes of finally finishing the story he failed to in 2023.
However, after Seth Rollins got in Rhodes’ head and tried to convince Rhodes to face him for the World Heavyweight Championship, things seemed to pivot. Cody Rhodes shocked everyone by apparently giving his WrestleMania match against Roman Reigns to The Rock – and fans were not happy.
#WeWantCody trended on social media as a video of The Rock’s return became one of WWE’s most disliked videos on YouTube. While many fans worried this left Rhodes bumped from a match they wanted to see, it seems WWE might well have a plan.
On Raw, there were plenty of mentions of the supportive hashtag while Michael Cole drew attention to some ‘Rocky Sucks’ chants despite them not being overly loud.
Is Cody Rhodes Set For Roman Reigns WrestleMania Match?
Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer indicated his belief that the situation with Cody Rhodes and WrestleMania is now a part of WWE storyline and suggests that based on Raw, Rhodes will be involved in some form or fashion with Roman Reigns come WrestleMania:
100% work. It’s been 100% a work dating back for a while. Here’s the thing and it’ll all play out on Thursday however it plays out. But the thing is, whenever I was trying to find out what was going on, the one question that nobody could answer for me was, why did Cody Rhodes win the Royal Rumble?
Because if Rock was going to wrestle against Roman Reigns, and Punk was going to wrestle Seth Rollins, where does Cody fit in? I mean, he’s not going to not be on the card. He was top of the full-time wrestlers in the company. Cody was number one for the last year. I mean, he was pushed the most, he never lost. I mean, it was very clear they were building something, he lost to Roman at WrestleMania. That’s his only singles loss I can even recall. He headlined all the house shows until Seth won that world title. And then Seth headlined the house shows.
But Cody was the number two guy and really, Cody was probably a bigger star than Seth for most of the year, if not the entire year. How do you go to WrestleMania and have him win the Rumble, if there’s not a big plan for him? I mean, it’s pretty clear the idea somehow is, I was told, the Daniel Bryan thing. Again, why would he have won the Royal Rumble? Why didn’t Punk win the Rumble?
I mean, the idea for Punk is that Punk was going to win the Elimination Chamber. And that’s how that was going to work. It feels like to me watching the show that they’re going to have a men’s Elimination Chamber with Sami Zayn and Drew McIntyre as two of the guys and I’m sure there’ll be some others. Because Sami Zayn is all of a sudden talking about the world title and Drew McIntyre is all over everything, on every show. He’s in there with the top guys. So he can’t be sitting there doing nothing at WrestleMania either. So I guess we have to watch it all play out.
But when Logan Paul like starts with the hashtag, which was right away, or pretty quick. It was like, okay, they’re promoting this hashtag. And then Pat McAfee just opens the show with the hashtag, and they got all those signs that they’re focusing on.
I don’t know. We’ll find out on Thursday. I mean, he’s obviously somewhat the heel, but at the same time, I was surprised when they tried the negative chants on Rock. You could hear them, but they weren’t loud. And you could tell it was very few people, and most people didn’t join in at all. So I thought that’s big when Cody and Seth are in the ring, and they’re, they’re expecting it. And Seth goes, ‘Oh, I never expected to hear that.’ But it really wasn’t [loud], and that’s supposed to encourage it. It was like the people were super behind Cody but they didn’t join in the way I expected them to.
Meltzer was asked if the situation was WWE’s plan to get The Rock hated by fans to amplify the crowd support for Rhodes:
I think based on how that interview was scripted was not how they expected it either. But it was enough that it wasn’t an embarrassment. But I thought that was kind of interesting. But there’s some people who are super passionate about it, without a doubt going crazy about it. The death threats are just way off the pale. But I don’t know, there’s certainly an audience that hates it.
However, Meltzer thinks the real goal of WWE and The Rock was to increase interest in the product and that The Rock won’t care if he’s cheered or booed as long as plenty of fans pay to see what happens:
I think that there’s going to be a tonne of people that TMobile on Thursday. If they boo him or cheer him [Rock], and here’s the deal with him. He didn’t care if he’s booed or or cheered, I promise you he doesn’t care. His validation is based on purely one thing, and that’s box office. That’s purely revenue. Boo, cheer, whatever. It’s like, did it draw a sell-out, and this was going to draw a sell-out either way. But as far as is the interest level in the product up? And if the interest level in the product is up, that’s the goal.
The goal at the end of the day is interest in the product however it is. Birmingham really doesn’t count so much because people didn’t know he was going to be there. But this one, this one counts. And it’s like they sold a lot of tickets in the end. And that’s telling. I mean, there’s certainly no boycott here. And, you know, there’s certainly no lack of interest in this WrestleMania that’s for sure.
Cody Rhodes seems to have a plan up his sleeve as he told fans to trust him, indicating that he knows what he’ll be doing come WrestleMania 40.