After winning the 2024 Men’s Royal Rumble match, Cody Rhodes came out on SmackDown and told Roman Reigns that he will face him for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship, but not at WrestleMania 40.
The Rock then came out and hugged Cody. Cody then let Rock have a face-off with Roman, thus giving up his WrestleMania XL main event spot.
Cody looked visibly unhappy giving up his spot during this segment, which led to the “#WeWantCody” movement on Social Media.
The American Nightmare then took back his WrestleMania spot from The Rock, and The Rock ended up turning heel. In the end, Cody walked out of WrestleMania as the new WWE Champion and finished the story.
On The Ringer Wrestling Show, Seven Bucks SVP and The Rock’s WWE creative writer Brian Gewirtz revealed that Cody unintentionally went off-script during this segment, as he was supposed to look excited when giving his WrestleMania spot to The Final Boss.
Here’s what Gewirtz said:
“I will say Cody (Rhodes) is a human being who is genuine and real and he wears his heart and emotions on his sleeve and I will say, in Alabama, certainly, even if you tell me, dude, that will never work. That’s stupid to even propose it.
But the idea was supposed to be, again — it’s like a Nixon-Kennedy debate a little bit where it’s like if you read the transcript, you’re like, oh, Nixon kicked his a$$. If you watch the actual footage, you go, ah, it was a sweaty, terrible mess. Because Cody, it was supposed to be, in some form, like, ‘yeah! F**kin’ A! Go get ‘em Rock! You’re gonna get your a$$ kicked Roman! Let’s do this!’ And kind of this uplifting promo and instead, he looked like someone shot his dog in the face in the parking lot.
Like you said, just look at his expression and by the way, someone else who even when the team wins, sometimes looks forlorn and upset and despondent, Julius Randle. Hey. So yeah, that, I don’t think helped matters. It might not have changed, it might not have affected anything. But certainly on paper — and by the way, I don’t even blame Cody for that because he’s real, he’s one of the realest people I’ve ever met so yeah, it’s like, he said what he had to say in the promo.
But you couldn’t mask what he was really feeling and I think the fans felt that a lot. I think the fans felt like he doesn’t mean a word of this. This is being forced for him to say. He’s despondent. He’s literally doing the Michael Cera-Arrested Development-Charlie Brown walk out of the arena, when he’s supposed to be on cloud nine so, I think that had a lot to do with it and the conversation.”
NEW VIDEO: Super Exposing Shots Of Brandi Rhodes (Cody Rhodes’ Wife):
