Gewirtz provides another extensive look into the main event program at WrestleMania XL.
David LaGreca and Tommy Dreamer of Busted Open welcomed Brian Gewritz onto the show and they dove further into the WrestleMania XL main event storyline involving Roman Reigns, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Seth Rollins and now-Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
Gewirtz began discussing the segment with The Rock on the Day 1 edition of Raw when he asked the audience if he should sit at the head of the table. Before Raw, there was a meeting in Rock’s hotel with Gewirtz, Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque and Nick Khan. It was there that it was suggested that Rock could begin testing the audience to see how engaged they would be in a program with him and Roman Reigns.
As that conversation was ongoing, Levesque brought up Cody’s path to WrestleMania. Gewirtz would go on to say that by mid-January, Rock versus Roman was ‘pretty much’ a lock so he questioned Cody winning the Royal Rumble. He thought Rhodes winning would be problematic. Brian revealed that in a meeting, he stood behind the idea of CM Punk winning the Rumble and challenging Seth Rollins.
Gewirtz mentioned that he’s 100 percent certain that everyone would have hated the original plan before all the different pieces came in to play. He said when Punk got hurt, things began to shift.
That kind of led us to a pinpoint, January 1st, the promo with Jinder (Mahal) in San Diego, because at that point, it was looking very much like a possibility that Rock and Roman (Reigns) was gonna happen and we had a meeting in Rock’s — we rented a hotel room for the day in San Diego. It was me, Rock, Triple H and Nick and we talked about it all — Nick Khan — we talked about it all and Triple H was very, as you would imagine, aware and astute of the current Cody (Rhodes) storyline and brought that up and we talked about that for a while and at the end of the that meeting, this is what’s also funny that people don’t know is that everyone enjoyed the, you know, for what it was, the promo with Jinder. But what everyone was talking about at the end of it was, ‘Should The Rock sit at the bar? Should he sit at the booth? Or should he sit at the head of the table?’ And that came about super late into our meeting in San Diego at the hotel, because, as we were talking about Cody, it was said, ‘Well you know what? I hear you. Maybe we should do a little test polling of the audience and not just the audience in San Diego but the audience all over the world. What if I kind of teased it without saying it directly?’ We brainstormed on how to do that, he did it and as you saw, the place went nuts and online went nuts and maybe nuts is different degrees of nuts in terms of if you’re a diehard Cody fan and you might be, hey, wait a second. What’s he talking about here? But for the most part, it was overwhelmingly positive when he teased head of the table, and at that point, we were like, okay, that gives us our answer. We’re locked in. He did the TKO announcement, he went to WWE HQ. I have, what ended up being 96 pages of merch and t-shirt and title belt design ideas from creative services and it was pretty much locked in at that point which begs the question which I know you’re gonna ask which everyone would ask and naturally ask which is, okay, if all of that is the plan at this point in mid-January or whatever it is, why, on for the love of all things holy, do you have Cody Rhodes win the Royal Rumble? That would be your question, right?
Well, let me backtrack for a second and just say there’s — the idea of Cody winning the Rumble, I thought, was problematic. In full transparency. I said even in San Diego in that meeting, I thought the cleanest thing to do if we’re booking Rock and Roman is to have (CM) Punk win the Rumble and challenge (Seth) Rollins, just because there’s a difference storyline-wise in my opinion of Cody wanting to finish the story and having earned the right to finish the story by winning the Royal Rumble. Once you when the Royal Rumble, that dynamic changes from, I want to donate my hamstring to O.G. Anunoby so we could beat the (Indiana) Pacers in the playoffs. That’s not gonna happen. But Cody winning the Rumble changes the dynamic completely because it goes from something that, yeah, we all want things but now he’s got it and why would he do anything other than focus on Roman? And that’s what he naturally did when he pointed to him. Why wouldn’t he? That’s exactly what that character would do… I do ultimately want to write a second book, I think, on this whole thing… I don’t wanna say everything, but I will say, and I could say this with 100 percent certainty that the original plan is something that you, Dave (LaGreca) and many, many more people would have hated more than anything in life itself. I can’t overstate that or understate that. I can’t state that anymore clearer. But, Punk gets hurt and the dominos start falling and things start shifting and then we get to a point now where the WrestleMania press conference is coming up. We need to promote something, a main event of some sort and we’re in this space and now we get to the infamous Birmingham, Alabama promo.
Circling back to 2023, the day after WrestleMania 39, Gewirtz called a member of WWE’s creative team and said Johnson versus Reigns could be a possibility for WrestleMania XL. Gewirtz learned that WWE had a plan in place for Reigns versus Rhodes II a year in advance.
As far as why Rock versus Reigns did not happen at WrestleMania 39, Brian said there was a ‘specific creative reason’ and he’ll allow Rock to share that when he’s ready.
As you know, as Rock’s talked about with (Pat) McAfee and everything else, Rock versus Roman (Reigns) was talked about for WrestleMania 39 in L.A. and I wasn’t a part of those talks but you know, I’ve heard just like everyone else and I’ve also sidebarred with Rock on it. It was very close to happening. It didn’t happen for a specific creative reason which isn’t my story to tell. That’s Rock’s story to tell one day. When WrestleMania 39 happened, I called my friend at WWE, Tommy (Dreamer) knows, on the creative team and I just said, ‘Hey, just so you know, I’ve been talking to Rock and similar to the Rock-Ronda tag match,’ I said, ‘There’s a chance, there’s a good chance that Rock and Roman might be a possibility for WrestleMania 40.’ This is a year before. I said, ‘What do you guys plan for WrestleMania 40?’ And he said, ‘Well, as you saw –’ this was after WrestleMania 39, the day after. ‘So, Cody lost. The idea is to give him a solid year to go through many trials and tribulations starting with Brock and then do the rematch at WrestleMania 40.’ I said, ‘Okay, great. Well, this might exist, just so you know. I’m just letting you know. You don’t need to change anything.’ A year in advance, so many different things can happen. ‘But just know in the back of your mind that he’s thinking about it and it might happen…’ And it wasn’t just between me and the writer. It was, you know, within the inner circle would be like, ‘You know what? That’s great. We’re gonna do our thing. You let us know on your end and if it gets to it, it’s a great problem to have.’ One storyline, great built WrestleMania and this other dream match that’s been talked about for a while.
To close out the chat, Brian said as a fan, he’d rather see Rhodes versus Rock than Reigns versus Rock at this point.
If you told me, point blank, right now, hey, you have the pencil. Would you wanna do Cody (Rhodes) versus Rock or Roman (Reigns) versus Rock? As a fan, for me, I’d personally like to see Cody versus Rock right now based on where those characters are.
On the Raw after WrestleMania XL, The Rock approached Cody and told them that their story is just beginning. Johnson is currently shooting a film titled ‘The Smashing Machine’ and he’s playing the role of MMA legend Mark Kerr.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Busted Open with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
