WWE: The Rock Facing Roman Reigns Was “Pretty Much” Locked for WrestleMania 40

At WrestleMania 40 Cody Rhodes finally finished his story by defeating Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Championship. On the road to the grandest stage of them all, Rhodes had one more hurdle to overcome — The Rock. The claims that Reigns and The Rock was set for WrestleMania 39 last year are well documented, even by the man himself. However, that match never ended up taking place. The Rock reappeared in WWE back in January on the Day 1 edition of WWE Raw and gave a subtle hint that a match between The Head of the Table and Rock was closer to becoming a reality than ever before.

After Rhodes won the Royal Rumble and became a two-time winner, he appeared on SmackDown to reveal his plans to go after Reigns one last time. Only, that didn’t happen. Instead, The Rock came out and had a stare down with Reigns. This prompted the WWE Universe to voice their disapproval of steamrolling Rhodes who had been working to get back to the title picture for a year. Brian Gewirtz, a former head writer for WWE who now works closely with The Rock at Seven Bucks Productions, revealed on Busted Open Radio that the match was “pretty much” set for WrestleMania this year. Gewirtz revealed that before the promo against Jinder Mahal, they rented a hotel room in San Diego for himself, Rock, Triple H and Nick Khan about the possibility of it happening.

The Long Road to The Rock vs. Roman Reigns

“… We talked about it all and Triple H was very, as you would imagine, aware and astute of the current Cody 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?’” 

They decided to poll the audience without outright saying, and the response they got was “overwhelmingly positive” in terms of going forward with Reigns vs. The Rock. Gewirtz went on to say that at that point they had their answer and began drafting ideas for merchandise and title belt designs. He then went into detail about how Rhodes winning the Rumble came into play. 

“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,” he continued, adding that Rhodes winning changed the dynamic completely. “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.” 

Ultimately, according to Gewirtz, the original plan would have been something that many 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” (h/t: POST Wrestling).