Brian Gewirtz paints an unpleasant picture of what Cody Rhodes‘ WrestleMania XL plans would have been if The Rock vs. Roman Reigns went on as scheduled.
Former WWE head writer Brian Gewirtz was a recent guest on Busted Open Radio. When asked about the fact that Cody Rhodes winning the Royal Rumble wasn’t the best idea to do when the company wanted to have The Rock face Roman Reigns at WrestleMania, Gewirtz admitted he found the entire situation problematic.
“The idea of Cody winning the Rumble, I saw it as problematic,” Brian Gewirtz admitted. “To be in full transparency I said even in San Diego in that meeting, I thought the cleanest thing to do if we’re booking Rock and Roman is to have Punk win the Rumble and challenge Rollins. Just because there’s a difference storyline-wise, in my opinion, of Cody wanting to finish the story and having earned the right to finish the story by winning the Royal Rumble.
“Once you win the Royal Rumble, that dynamic changes from I want to donate my hamstring to OG Anunoby so we could beat the Pacers in the playoffs. That’s not going to happen. But Cody winning the Rumble changes the dynamic completely because it goes from yeah, we all want things. But now he’s got it. And why would he do anything other than focus on Roman? And that’s what he naturally did when he pointed to him. Why wouldn’t he?
“That’s exactly what that character would do. I’ll just say that — I do ultimately want to write a second book on this whole thing. So I don’t want to say everything, but I will say and I can say this with 100% certainty that the original plan is something that you Dave and many, many more people would have hated more than anything in life itself. I can’t overstate that or understate that. I can’t state that any more clearly.
“But Punk gets hurt, and the dominoes start falling, and things start shifting. Then we get to a point where the WrestleMania press conference is coming up. We need to promote something, a main event of some sort. And now we get to the infamous Birmingham, Alabama promo.”
The Rock read the tea leaves of the WWE Universe regarding Cody Rhodes
The SmackDown segment between Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, and The Rock didn’t go as Creative envisioned it. Which resulted in the WWE Universe responding very loudly on social media that weekend. But before we even got to RAW that Monday, The Rock was already pitching to Gewirtz that he should turn heel.
“And then the next thing that happened after that basically changed the course of WWE history in a way,” Brian Gewirtz said. “I got a voice message from Rock that weekend. SmackDown was on Friday. I think he gave it to me late, like four o’clock in the morning his time. He was in Hawaii on Saturday. I got it Sunday morning.
“He left me a voice message saying, ‘Okay, hear this one out. What if I turned heel? I’m just saying, what if I turned heel? What if we completely flip this thing on its ear and we go in an entirely different direction?’ And granted this is before the arena started I know that one house show started getting online traction and everything. I think he read the tea leaves, but I also think, and we always have talked about it. I said this before when we were working on promos together being like, ‘Oh man, if you’re a heel, you could say blank.’
“He’s always kind of wanted to try to do it, but that’s what he proposed. He then proposed the tag match as the main event of WrestleMania because he liked the elements; he liked teaming with Roman, that image of badassery. He liked the throwback to WrestleMania I and the big tag match that main evented the show. I said, ‘I love the tag match too. But that can’t be the main event. That could be night one main event. I don’t think there’s a world that exists anymore that can’t end with Cody beating Roman for the title on night two.’
“So he said, ‘Great, figure it out. Figure out a way to get the tag match to the singles match.’ We had an idea by the time we got to the press conference. It was different stipulations than it ended up being. I don’t think anyone really loved them. Without getting into specifics, it was more of if this team wins, this will be the match or if this team wins, this will be the match.
“Which is problematic because it required Cody winning twice, and you need that emotional release. He has to lose the first night because you need that emotional release of everything. Even if Rollins won the tag match, it’s still the same thing. You have to have Cody win when he wins with everything on the line for night two.
“So I think two days after the press conference, I threw out the The Bloodline Rules or everyone’s banned from ringside stip to Rock. Rock loved it, he called Nick, he called Ari, he talked to Triple H. I talked to Ed and Bruce on the creative team. Everyone’s like, great, this is what we’re going to do now. Off to the races.
“Then everything started flowing from there because everyone started contributing to it. Not that they weren’t before, but Roman is coming up with the acknowledge me stuff, and Triple H is overseeing everything and adding something that makes it even better every single week. And Cody and Seth and themselves, it was awesome.”
What do you make of Brian Gewirtz’s comments? What do you think WWE’s original plans were for Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania XL? Let us know your thoughts by sounding off in the comments section below.
If you use any of these quotes, please credit Busted Open with a link to this article for the transcription.
