One of the historic WrestleMania matches of all time was the Undisputed Universal Title match between the Tribal Chief Roman Reigns and the American Nightmare Cody Rhodes. But initially, the plan was for Reigns to wrestle his cousin, the People’s Champion, The Rock. Plans changed after a lot of fan backlash. The people wanted The Tribal Chief to wrestle Rhodes and for Rhodes to finally finish his story. The Main Event of night two of WrestleMania XL was very well received by the fans and critics alike. Rhodes made history by becoming the first person in his family to capture the top prize in WWE.
Recently, while speaking to Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina, Roman Reigns mentioned that he did not care if he was wrestling The Rock or Cody Rhodes because at the end of the day, he was going to be in the main event.
“It didn’t matter to me. I was the Main Event no matter what. I’m the guy that everybody wanted to dance with. So… Everybody wanted to… I’m the ‘Hot Chic.’ Everybody wanted to take me out. So, it was one of those things where we just needed to get there and defend this thing. We… It doesn’t matter who it is, they’re trying to stop history from happening. They’re trying to take us off of the pinnacle right now. So, it was the same task at hand for me.”
Roman Reigns on his thoughts of not wrestling The Rock at WrestleMania XL
The Original Tribal Chief also mentioned that the fact that he was not going to wrestle the Rock on the grand stage did not affect him at all.
“I never really looked at it like that. It was almost more so like this… Kind of the same sentiment when I got all deep on you and you said get back in the Tribal Chief character. That situation where when you zoom out and you see all these family members together. When you are able to do that with someone from your family, when you are able to do that with people from your bloodline, there’s just something about that. I don’t know… Maybe you can ask the Kelsey Brothers or even the Harbaughs is like, it’s just this weird… It’s just sharing such a crazy huge Main Event level moment with so many eyes on it. The whole world is watching. Especially with the way we have it now.
“But it’s… I wasn’t even looking at him [The Rock], ‘Oh, this is DJ.’ It was just… It was made by another family member. And I mean that with the most the utmost love and respect. And it’s really hard to even put in words how that could make a man feel and just how proud I am of being able to attempt to articulate this. It’s… We’re very fortunate to be a part of [WrestleMania XL’s Main Event],” Roman Reigns said.
Would you like to see Roman Reigns wrestle The Rock in the future?
