Following a roller coaster of emotions for WWE fans, Cody Rhodes’ WrestleMania journey now has a much clearer direction.
Despite Cody Rhodes winning the 2024 Royal Rumble and making it clear at the event that he would be choosing Roman Reigns, a surprise appearance from The Rock would throw all expected plans into disarray. As seen on the February 2nd episode of SmackDown, Rhodes declared that he wouldn’t be facing Reigns at WrestleMania 40 and introduced The Rock shortly afterwards. Although The People’s Champion and The Tribal Chief staring off was well received by the live crowd and a great moment in isolation, it was not what fans wanted in 2024.
Online fans became outraged by the sudden change in direction and the hashtag We Want Cody would be seen all over social media. Unfortunately, some fans would also act in an unacceptable manner as they would send death threats to The Rock’s daughter Ava, who currently manages NXT.
Fans hoped for answers and updates on the February 5th episode of Raw. Despite there being overwhelming support for The American Nightmare and some negative chants directed at The Rock, there was still no confirmation as to what Rhodes will be doing at WrestleMania. However, thanks to some hints from production and commentary, the solution has been seemingly revealed.
The official WrestleMania match will be announced on Thursday at a press conference in Las Vegas, which will have Rhodes, Reigns and Rock all in attendance. Speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that this has all been done to elevate Rhodes even further and that commentary and production would not focus on signs and social media activity if it was not the direction they were going in:
100% work. It’s been 100% work dating back for a while. It’ll all play out on Thursday, however it plays out. But the thing is, whenever I was trying to find out what was going on, the one question that nobody could answer for me was why did Cody Rhodes win the Royal Rumble? Because it’s like, if Rock was going to wrestle against Roman Reigns, and Punk was going to wrestle Seth Rollins, where does Cody fit in?
I mean, he’s not going to not be on the card. He was top of the full-time wrestlers in the company. Cody was number one for the last year. I mean, he was pushed the most, he never lost. I mean, it was very clear they were building something, he lost to Roman at WrestleMania, that’s like his only singles loss I can even recall.
He headlined all the house shows until Seth won that world title and then Seth headlined the house shows. But Cody was the number two guy and really, Cody was probably a bigger star than Seth for most of the year, if not the entire year. How do you go to WrestleMania and have him win the Rumble if there’s not a big plan for him? It’s pretty clear the idea somehow is, I was told, the Daniel Bryan thing. Again, why would he have won the Royal Rumble? Why didn’t Punk win the Rumble? I mean, the idea for Punk is that Punk was going to win the Elimination Chamber. And that’s how that was going to work.
Obviously, it feels like to me watching the show that they’re going to have a men’s Elimination Chamber with Sami Zayn and Drew McIntyre as two of the guys and I’m sure there’ll be some others. Because Sami Zayn is all of a sudden talking about the world title and Drew McIntyre is all over everything, on every show. He’s in there with the top guys. So he can’t be sitting there doing nothing at WrestleMania either.
So I guess we have to watch it all play out. But yeah, when Logan Paul like starts with the hashtag, which was right away, or pretty quick it was like, okay, they’re promoting this hashtag. And then Pat McAfee just opens the show with the hashtag, and they got all those signs that they’re focusing on.
Cody Rhodes Being Cheered Was Always The Plan, But What About The Rock?
Meltzer was then asked if the plan was for Rock to be hated in this angle, to which Meltzer responded that the Hollywood star is more focused on the financial response than the crowd response:
I don’t know. We’ll find out on Thursday. He’s obviously somewhat the heel, but at the same time, I was surprised when they tried the negative chants on Rock. You could hear them, but they weren’t loud. And you could tell it was very few people, and most people didn’t join in at all. So I thought that’s big when Cody and Seth are in the ring and they’re expecting it. Seth goes, Oh, I never expected to hear that. But it really wasn’t, and that’s supposed to encourage it. The people were super behind Cody but they didn’t join in the way I expected them to.
I think the way that interview was scripted it was not how they expected it either. But it was enough that it wasn’t an embarrassment. But I thought that was kind of interesting. But there’s some people who are super passionate about it, without a doubt going crazy about it. The death threats are just way off the pale. There’s certainly an audience that hates it, but there was 10,000 people. Here’s the other thing too, whatever they’re doing, it’s sure working. Because like tonight’s show, just a couple of days ago they had like, 7,600 tickets out. There are over 10,000 people there tonight.
You don’t move that many tickets from Friday to Monday ever. So whatever it is, people are buying this thing they are paying to see it. I think that there’s going to be a tonne of people at TMobile Arena on Thursday. If they boo him or cheer him [Rock], and here’s the deal with him. He didn’t care if he’s booed or or cheered, I promise you he doesn’t care. His validation is based on purely one thing, and that’s box office. That’s purely revenue. Boo, cheer, whatever, did it draw a sell-out? And this was going to draw a sell-out either way.
But as far as the interest level, the interest level in the product is up, that’s the goal. The goal at the end of the day is interest in the product however it is. Birmingham really doesn’t count so much because people didn’t know he was going to be there. But this one, this one counts. And they sold a lot of tickets in the end and that’s telling. I mean, there’s certainly no boycott here. And there’s certainly no lack of interest in this WrestleMania that’s for sure.
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