The chaos surrounding Pat McAfee’s involvement in the Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes WrestleMania 42 program has a clearer explanation, and it points directly to the reaction McAfee received when he was unveiled as Orton’s mystery caller.
McAfee was revealed as Orton’s mystery caller on the April 3 episode of SmackDown, just two weeks before WrestleMania 42. His insertion into the program was reportedly a decision made by TKO CEO Ari Emanuel rather than WWE creative. The original plan called for McAfee to be in Orton’s corner at WrestleMania while Jelly Roll was in Rhodes’ corner, with the two then teaming up at Backlash on May 9 in a tag match pitting McAfee and Orton against Jelly Roll and Rhodes.
The angle generated an immediate and overwhelming negative response from fans. Multiple WWE wrestlers reportedly were unhappy with the direction, and Cody Rhodes himself called it the most ill-received thing in the history of professional wrestling. McAfee ultimately said on his ESPN show following WrestleMania 42 that his time in wrestling was over, honoring the stipulation he had set before the show that he would leave the business forever if Orton failed to win the title.
According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, McAfee opted out of the angle, and that decision is what triggered the broader changes to the plans surrounding WrestleMania 42 and Backlash.
Meltzer said, “With the Pat McAfee thing, he opted out. That’s what actually led to everything changing….And then he opted out again. That’s why the tag match from Backlash was taken off.”
He later added, “The thing is that both of them, Pat McAfee and Jelly Roll, were very cognisant of what has been said about celebrities in wrestling. Both of them love wrestling, and I think that they realized that there was a lot of negative sentiment about it.”
“I don’t know the exact reason McAfee pulled out. There could have been many different reasons, but the reason that was believed was, in fact, the reaction. I was told that the belief was it was due to the reaction that he pulled out. It wasn’t like anything else. There’s a lot, a lot of chaos that was going on, especially on Saturday, for WrestleMania,” Meltzer said.
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