It's fair to say that most fans never expected Cody Rhodes to turn heel and join forces with The Rock at Elimination Chamber. However, with John Cena a likely contender to face the American Nightmare at WrestleMania, it also wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility.
Instead, Cena shocked the world and finally broke bad by brutally attacking Rhodes after selling his soul to the Final Boss.
In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer claims that The Rock did indeed want to be aligned with a heel Cody heading into the Show of Shows. He refused - a decision many in the company agreed with as they felt it would hurt the product - and the decision was made to go with Cena instead.
"I had figured Punk was going to get the slot," Meltzer posited, "but we’re told it never came down to him as Cena agreed to do it."
We also have details on the original plans for Cena's heel turn. According to Meltzer, the idea "was that the Cena turn with Rock would have been saved for WrestleMania’s finish. The idea is that once the decision was made, during the day, to do it on this show, then obviously it had to go on last."
That would have echoed what happened when Stone Cold Steve Austin turned heel by joining forces with Vince McMahon. However, it's easy to see why WWE believed there was a greater appeal to having a Cena feud with the babyface Rhodes heading into WrestleMania.
The insinuation also seems to be that The Rock was going to help the Leader of the Cenation with the title at the PLE; whether that's still the plan remains to be seen, though Cena likely turned because he's desperate for that 17th world title win.
Rhodes previously said this about a potential heel run in WWE:
"You can do whatever. WWE is such a hot ticket now. It moves on. It’s great to have a quarterback, great to have franchise players or top stars, whatever it might be, but it’s going to move on with or without you there, someone will fill that spot. Social media for pro wrestling is very important and you’ll hear people try to say it’s not important, you’ll hear people say they’re just trolls. I think you need to know what a troll really is. This is a real person who probably has a pretty good high-paying job. This is how they release. This is their event, whatever. This is my weird psychology or theory on trolls."
"But with all that said, there’s a whole section, a huge section of WWE audience that’s not actively on social, they have it, they do stuff on it, but that is not their bread and butter. They’re not dictated to by it. Whereas some of the other independent and smaller promotions are dictated to by social media so we have to always look at it. “We want Cody” is a prime example. Is this social media or is this bigger? It only became bigger when we showed up in that arena on Monday and they started chanting it in real time. That’s where you know the difference between a fad, between this thing and something that okay, this is a wave that’s far far bigger. It could happen for sure. I just don’t see it happening."
Here's how Rhodes responded to Cena's heel turn during SmackDown yesterday evening: