Brian Gerwitz was WWE's head writer in the 2000s and later left the company to work alongside Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in Seven Bucks Productions.
When the Brahma Bull returns to the world of pro wrestling, he brings Gerwitz with him. That was the case earlier this year when WWE started making plans for WrestleMania 40 to be headlined by The Rock vs. Roman Reigns in a veritable dream match for many fans.
Cody Rhodes winning the Royal Rumble meant he was entitled to that match, creating a massive backlash among fans when the American Nightmare handed his place at the Show of Shows to The Rock.
As you'll be aware, plans had to change, The Rock turned heel and teamed up with Reigns in a tag team match, and Rhodes got to finish his story as planned.
Talking on Busted Open Radio, Gerwitz shed new light on original plans for the Road to WrestleMania and explained why Rhodes winning the Rumble was the first indication that things wouldn't quite go the way he and the Final Boss planned.
"That kind of led us to a pinpoint, January 1st, the promo with Jinder (Mahal) in San Diego, because at that point, it was looking very much like a possibility that Rock and Roman [Reigns] was gonna happen and we had a meeting in Rock’s — we rented a hotel room for the day in San Diego. It was me, Rock, Triple H and Nick and we talked about it all — Nick Khan — we talked about it all and Triple H was very, as you would imagine, aware and astute of the current Cody [Rhodes] storyline and brought that up and we talked about that for a while."
"But what everyone was talking about at the end of it was, 'Should The Rock sit at the bar? Should he sit at the booth? Or should he sit at the head of the table?' And that came about super late into our meeting in San Diego at the hotel, because, as we were talking about Cody, it was said, ‘Well you know what? I hear you. Maybe we should do a little test polling of the audience and not just the audience in San Diego but the audience all over the world. What if I kind of teased it without saying it directly?' We brainstormed on how to do that, he did it and as you saw, the place went nuts and online went nuts and maybe nuts is different degrees of nuts in terms of if you’re a diehard Cody fan and you might be, "Hey, wait a second. What’s he talking about here?'"
"We’re locked in. He did the TKO announcement, he went to WWE HQ. I have, what ended up being 96 pages of merch and t-shirt and title belt design ideas from creative services and it was pretty much locked in at that point which begs the question which I know you’re gonna ask which everyone would ask and naturally ask which is, 'Okay, if all of that is the plan at this point in mid-January or whatever it is, why, on for the love of all things holy, do you have Cody Rhodes win the Royal Rumble?'"
"The idea of Cody winning the Rumble, I thought, was problematic. 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 [CM] Punk win the Rumble and challenge [Seth] 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...Cody winning the Rumble changes the dynamic completely because it goes from something that, '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?"
"Punk gets hurt and the dominos start falling and things start shifting and then we get to a point now where the WrestleMania press conference is coming up. We need to promote something, a main event of some sort and we’re in this space and now we get to the infamous Birmingham, Alabama promo."
That promo saw a clearly upset and angry Rhodes give The Rock the green light to face Reigns at WrestleMania. The fan backlash was immediate and vocal, and had The Rock not turned heel, fans turning on him as they did Batista in 2014 was inevitable.
Was Triple H, a key figure in that Daniel Bryan storyline, aware of that when he booked Rhodes to win the Rumble? The Rock is believed to have talked his way into the WrestleMania main event by joining the TKO board, so it's certainly possible The Game had a...well, game plan.