WWE made several changes to the WrestleMania 40 card, including plans involving Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Plans
At the recent WrestleMania 40 press conference, Cody Rhodes announced he would challenge Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Title at WrestleMania 40, a change from expectation as it was widely believed WWE would announce The Rock vs. Reigns at the event instead.
WWE has since teased the idea of having The Rock team with Reigns against Rhodes and World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins. Speculation has been that WWE could do the tag team match on night one with night two featuring Rhodes vs. Reigns, although that has NOT been confirmed.
The Rock was receiving a lot of backlash among fans following the news on SmackDown that Rhodes wouldn’t be getting to finish his story with Reigns. This was when the pivot happened from a booking standpoint.
In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported that Rock was said to have quickly changed his pitch for the match with Reigns because of the backlash and wanted to go heel as he felt “the booing can be explained as him playing heel wrestler and he’s even said he is very happy to do that.”
A few people have said that the heel turn was necessary for The Rock due to the backlash, bad publicity he got from the Black Adam debacle, and Young Rock being canceled, so the decision was made that it wasn’t good for Rock to be booed heavily as a babyface.
The call
Meltzer wrote, “There is said to be far more behind the scenes that hasn’t come out but, given the timing, can’t be talked about now.”
Meltzer added, “But Johnson over the weekend said it was best to be out of the Reigns match, put Cody in, which by this point everyone conceded by then. It was Johnson who then pitched the heel turn and he did pitch the idea of the Reigns & Rock vs. Rhodes & Rollins match for night one. So that was his idea if that is how it turns out.”
The Rock and Reigns will appear on tonight’s SmackDown to further the storyline.
