Heading into this year's WrestleMania, we'd heard the plan was for Roman Reigns to face Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Cody Rhodes, meanwhile, would have battled Drew McIntyre and Seth Rollins for a separate world title; instead, the American Nightmare ultimately tried and failed to dethrone the Head of the Table.
Now, it's been confirmed that Reigns vs. The Rock was indeed "locked in" for WrestleMania 39 before the match ended up falling apart. Talking on The Pat McAfee Show, the Brahma Bull explained exactly what happened.
"Honestly, brother, it's not it's not the injury that I'm concerned about because that's just part of it. It's just part of the game. You sign up for it, you get hurt. We all get hurt. That's just the way it is," Johnson says. "It's not even the schedule because I could control the schedule to a large degree. It always comes to me going back to WWE and wrestling a match always comes down to the reason why and what we can create that's never been done before for the fans. So that's that. That's the idea."
"All right, so The Rock headlining WrestleMania with Roman Reigns. Sofi Stadium, that was locked [in]. What we were doing, the way we were doing it, we knew we were doing it. We were doing it."
Johnson went on to credit WWE President Nick Khan with bringing him and Vince McMahon together at the beginning of 2022, explaining they shook hands on the match and were keen to make it "something unprecedented."
"We can have the match, but the bigger thought was what can we do for the fans in this business that we love that will where WrestleMania isn't the end of something, it's actually the beginning of something bigger," he added. "So we got really, really close, but we couldn't actually nail what that thing was. So we decided to put our pencils down and then we agreed, 'Hey, listen, there's a merger coming up. Eventually, that will happen. There's WrestleMania in Philadelphia.'"
"I'm saying that's a potential, too. I'm open. But again, let's figure out what that is because the fans deserve something just incredible and unprecedented."
The Rock says he's thinking "big picture," though it's a little difficult to see what he's getting at here. Either way, while the match is an exciting prospect, a win for The Rock would give WWE a part-time champion who will probably work just a couple of times a year. And, if Reigns wins, where does he go from there?
Perhaps that was the issue for Johnson as well, and while it's good to know the door is open for WrestleMania 40, the majority of fans would rather see Rhodes finish his story by dethroning the Tribal Chief to finally become WWE Champion.