WWE’s Decision to Book Roman Reigns to Beat Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 39 Has Aged Poorly

It’s been seven weeks since Roman Reigns retained his Undisputed WWE Universal Championship against Cody Rhodes in the main event of WrestleMania 39. And as each week passes, an idea becomes all the more clear — this decision has aged poorly. Sitting in the post-show press conference was a bizarre experience. Gone was the positivity swirling around Night One, capitalized by the fist-pumping celebration of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens defeating The Usos to become the Undisputed WWE Tag Team Champions. That felt like the first half of a two-part finale, closing the chapter on one of WWE’s best storylines of the century (Zayn & The Bloodline) and the beginning of a new one. But then Reigns turned around and beat Rhodes, once again relying on the same outside interference that has come to define his record-setting reign. All that was left was a dumbfounded SoFi Stadium crowd all staring at a disheartened “American Nightmare” and a rubber chicken. 

But then Paul Levesque started talking to us media members. He wasted no time in addressing the elephant in the room, how one decision had just managed to suck the oxygen out of a crowd of nearly 90,000. But his comments made no mention of what actually happened in the match — in which six people ran in and got involved at least once. Instead, he spoke about the decision as though it was inevitable. 

“What I will say about that is, it’s always interesting to me when people say, ‘how can that happen?’ or ‘how can they do that in that moment?’” Levesque said before turning his attention to Rhodes’ “finish the story” tagline that had defined each of Rhodes’ promos leading up to the event. “It’s almost perfectly spelling out in this story. ‘I need to finish the story.’ In the WWE, the story never finishes. Tomorrow night on Raw, the story continues. The story takes another chapter. We just got to the end of the chapter. The story continues and that’s where this gets interesting to me. That is what is the most amazing thing about our business, the story never ends.”

Reading it now sounds as odd as it did then. It’s as though a narrator had emerged at the end of a play to tell the audience, “This character was wrong from the beginning and you should have seen his defeat coming!” Levesque was (and still is) technically correct, WWE has no offseason and there’s always the next show on the horizon. But seven weeks later, we’re still waiting for that “another chapter” to actually start. 

Think about what’s happened since that night. Rhodes has been stuck in what amounts to a filler arc with Brock Lesnar (whose motivation is so undefined the commentary team kept bringing it up during their first match at Backlash). Zayn and Owens are still fighting The Bloodline. And Reigns’ relationship with The Usos remains uncertain, something that’s been true since before they were calling it The Bloodline. Now we’re less than a week removed from Reigns and Solo Sikoa challenging Zayn and Owens for the tag titles at Night of Champions, which feels less like story progression and more like WWE is daring us to see if they’re crazy enough to hand Reigns two more titles to drape over his massive shoulders. 

It was tempting to write this the morning after the show, but it felt fair to “let things play out” on WWE TV for a while and see where the booking was going next. But WWE has since used that time to spin its wheels. All the while we’ve been hearing arguments to try and justify the decision from every corner of the industry, most of which seem to either ignore history or bend reality to aid their viewpoint. Yes, Cody had “faced enough adversity.” No, Reigns’ title reign (the longest in WWE this century) wasn’t going to be diminished if it fell shy of four digits. Yes, you could advance the story by just presenting Rhodes as a fighting champion. No, The Bloodline Saga wouldn’t just end with Roman dropping his titles. 

What really seals the deal on the decision aging poorly in the immediate months is that if you merely switch the result of that match, you can improve WWE’s entire TV product without changing a single match that has happened since. You can see how in the video below: 

This storyline is not beyond saving. But it still feels like a mistake seven weeks later, and it doesn’t seem like that outlook is going to improve anytime soon.