In late 2025, reports came out that Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns trilogy for the Undisputed WWE Championship was the plan for the WrestleMania 42 main event.
However, after Drew McIntyre defeated Rhodes in a 3 Stages of Hell match to win the WWE Championship, the Wrestling Observer reported that Reigns vs. Rhodes III is no longer the plan for WrestleMania 42.
But now, another source reports that Roman vs. Cody is still going to happen at WrestleMania 42, but with a twist – Roman is going to head into this match as the WWE Champion.
According to Ibou of Self Made Pro (who correctly reported that Jacob Fatu was going to return on SmackDown and that a WWE Title change was expected in the 3 Stages of Hell match), WWE’s original plan for WrestleMania 42 was for Roman to defeat Cody for the Undisputed Title.
Now, Roman is expected to defeat Drew to become the new WWE Champion on the road to WrestleMania 42, which will lead to Roman vs. Cody III in the main event of WrestleMania once again, where The American Nightmare is expected to win his title back with a change in character.
Here’s what Ibou reported:
“People in WWE are very aware of Roman’s status currently in the sense that he’s like a living legend and he’s so important to WWE, but he’s not a full-time guy and there will be some complications that come with him holding the championship as a part-time babyface.
So they tried to come up with ways to maybe circumvent this, to make it more interesting, to spice up the road to Mania. Triple H wanted to get some surprises in there and he wanted to throw some monkey wrenches into the road.
[Triple H] wants Cody to win, and so one of the things he devised… Drew McIntyre was the guy who pitched this and Drew was smart because now what he realized is I’m pitching things that can benefit me but I know it’ll go through because it’ll benefit the overall promotion and what they’re trying to do with their big thing.
The plan as of last week was Drew McIntyre was gonna be the middle man in this Cody-Roman story. The idea was gonna be Drew McIntyre was gonna hold the championship. It was going to lead to Cody Rhodes shifting his character ever so slightly. They were going to play around with the idea that did he attack Jacob Fatu? Did he not? Is Cody turning heel? Is he not? They’re gonna play around with this without actually doing it. Jacob Fatu is going to be a tweener on the show.
If you’re noticing, you’re not hearing a lot of Roman Reigns. It’s because he wasn’t going to be on TV for a lot of this. The bottom line is what I believe they’re going to do is play around with all these elements, all these moving parts. Roman Reigns is most likely going to challenge Drew McIntyre and beat Drew McIntyre at some point in this process, and then he’s going to face a challenging Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania.
We’ll see how that goes, but that’s what Paul Levesque’s trying to pull off here.”
Also Read: Original Plan For The WWE Title Match On January 9th SmackDown
