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WWE legend The Rock and Roman Reigns finally came face to face on the Road to WrestleMania 40. The reason why the match-up is potentially being booked has reportedly been revealed.
Cody Rhodes won the 2024 Royal Rumble match to book his title shot at WrestleMania. Rhodes even pointed at The Tribal Chief following his win, confirming that he was looking to go after the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion again.
However, things began to shift a bit when Seth Rollins came out on RAW to prompt Rhodes to challenge him at The Show of Shows. He left The American Nightmare in two minds.
The latest episode of SmackDown saw Cody Rhodes tell Roman Reigns that he would face him, but not at WrestleMania. This brought out The Rock, who will now likely face Reigns at The Show of Shows.
Dave Meltzer wrote on the Wrestling Observer forum (via WrestlingNews.co) that the plan to have Roman vs. Cody at Mania was locked in till last week.
"It was the plan on that night [Royal Rumble]. It was the plan the next day. It wasn't the plan the day after that."
In another post on the F4W Forum, Meltzer reported that The Rock was pushing hard for a match against his cousin, even after the idea was suggested to do the match in Saudi Arabia.
"Dwayne pushed super hard for it. Read last week's issue and this week's. The card changed when Punk & Brock were out and all the dominoes fell. Dwayne already wanted it and they felt they now needed it as well. Felt this was better to change the news flow away from Vince.”
He reported that Cody was the plan, but the recent happenings in WWE forced the company to go for something different. It led to The Rock getting fast-tracked into the spot.
“Cody was the plan. Dwayne was going to face him later, maybe next year's Mania, maybe Saudi. The Vince thing ends up worse than they thought and they changed the plan. I literally didn't know until yesterday that it could change and then I was told it's under lock. But 100% it was Punk vs. Seth and Cody vs. Reigns until Punk got hurt."
It looks like WWE fans will be getting a fourth match between Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins at this year's Mania. The interest could be much lower than the originally planned match between Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns.
WWE fans don't seem too happy at the booking of the match between The Rock and Roman Reigns
Many fans were surprised to see The Rock appear to interrupt the segment between Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns. Even more were surprised after Cody dropped his dream to take the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship away from The Tribal Chief.
WWE posted a video of the face-off between The Rock and Roman Reigns on its YouTube channel. The video garnered more dislikes than likes from fans.
It will be interesting to see how the creative team steers this story forward. More interestingly, Triple H will need to find a formula to make the match between Rhodes and Rollins more appealing to fans.
Are you excited to see The Rock vs. Roman Reigns at WWE WrestleMania XL? Sound off in the comments section below.
