Last night, Cody Rhodes appeared on SmackDown to announce his decision on which championship he would challenge at WrestleMania. Cody shocked the fans and said that he was coming for Roman Reigns, but not at WrestleMania.
The American Nightmare introduced The Rock as Reigns’ opponent. The bout will be officially announced on Thursday at a press event in Las Vegas.
Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer reported that The Rock has forced WWE to make the match at this year’s WrestleMania. Meltzer added that the company expected it would take Vince McMahon’s news away from the people.
“Dwayne [The Rock] pushed super hard for it. Read last week’s issue and this week’s. The card changed when [CM] Punk & Brock [Lesnar] were out and all the dominoes fell. Dwayne already wanted it, and they felt they now needed it as well. Felt this was better to change the news flow away from Vince. Cody was the plan. Dwayne was going to face him later, maybe next year’s Mania, maybe Saudi. Sh-t happens with Vince and Punk, the Vince thing ends up worse than they thought, and they change the plan. I literally didn’t know until yesterday that it could change, and then I was told it’s under lock. But 100% it was Punk vs. Seth and Cody vs. Reigns until Punk got hurt.”