WWE fans are in uproar after a backflip saw the planned main event of WrestleMania change out of nowhere – leaving out the most popular wrestler in the company.

On Saturday (AEDT)’s edition of Smackdown, Royal Rumble winner Cody Rhodes stood face-to-face with Universal Champion Roman Reigns; the man he was cheated out of beating at WrestleMania in 2023, and the man he clearly intended to face at WrestleMania in 2024.

After all, Rhodes has spoken so often about “finishing the story” – about winning the top belt in WWE, which his legendary father Dusty never did. Even if Dusty would hardly have cared about that fact given his incredible career away from WWE, it was a simple, brilliant story to explain why fans should back Rhodes; and they’ve made him the biggest babyface in the company thanks to it.

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But then on Smackdown, Rhodes declared his story entailed taking “everything” from Reigns, not just the world title. And because of that, he was not going to challenge Reigns at WrestleMania.

Out came The Rock. He hugged Rhodes – with screengrabs of the Rumble winner’s sad face quickly going viral – before standing face-to-face with Reigns. It’s believed their main event match for WrestleMania 40 will be confirmed over the coming week.

The reaction from WWE’s fans told the tale. As Reigns and Rock posed, the crowd directly behind them gave a mixed reaction at best, with some boos audible and thumbs down motions visible.

The reaction was even more savage online, with the YouTube upload of the Smackdown segment gathering over three times as many dislikes as likes, as of 18 hours ago. Almost every comment on The Rock’s recent social media posts are angry fans, asking why he took Rhodes’ spot or just telling him to leave.

So how did we get to this point? And why would WWE make this call that it’s very clear their fanbase does not want?

In the past, WWE almost seemed to antagonise its fans on purpose – from ensuring wrestlers would lose in their hometowns, to not taking advantage of performers who organically gain a huge amount of popularity (and aren’t necessarily the ones they want to be popular).

The latter category has ranged from Zack Ryder, who got over using his YouTube channel but other than an incredibly brief Intercontinental title reign several years after the peak was barely pushed, to Daniel Bryan – with fan support for the technical wizard ruining two Royal Rumbles.

In 2014, attendees booed beloved great Rey Mysterio when he was the No.30 entrant and it became clear Bryan was not even in the Rumble match; in 2015, Bryan was eliminated early and Roman Reigns (in the beginning of his push to become the company’s top babyface) was booed heavily – ironically, given this weekend’s incident, even after The Rock came out to endorse Reigns.

Other than 2014’s WrestleMania 30, when WWE wisely turned the fan backlash into a storyline and allowed Bryan to win the world title at WrestleMania, the company rarely listened to the hardcore fans who proved the noisiest. And thus many of those fans stopped watching WWE; the company’s TV ratings dropped, reaching the point where only the most passionate, WWE-only supporters were still watching the shows.

But this became a blessing. The supporters who copped the antagonistic relationship, but would still attend WWE shows despite their frustration, became the core fanbase of rival company AEW – so the people left watching WWE were fine with whatever the company did. They were the ones still cheering Reigns as a face, and who now gladly “acknowledge him” as a heel.

And this culling of the fanbase is a driving force behind WWE being so hot over the last couple of years. The crowds who attend their shows genuinely enjoy the product, and so the crowds are hot and word of mouth is positive, which makes more people want to attend and/or watch the shows. It’s a virtuous cycle, and WWE has for the most part realised taking advantage of its fans doesn’t work, and instead giving them what they want keeps them happy.

There have been a few exceptions though, and all are centered on Reigns.

The Bloodline storyline peaked in early 2023, with Sami Zayn at the core. Fans desperately wanted Zayn to be the one to dethrone Reigns; but for once WWE had too many hot babyfaces, because after debuting Rhodes at WrestleMania in 2022 and treating him as a megastar poaching from AEW, he was enormously popular as he won the 2023 Rumble.

Suddenly Zayn couldn’t beat Reigns, even though it would’ve been an incredible moment, because of course the story was Rhodes beating Reigns. So Zayn lost.

And then came WrestleMania… and Reigns simply cheated to win.

This turned many fans off. The ones left rationalised it to themselves, saying obviously Rhodes couldn’t beat Reigns – the real story was Jey Uso beating Reigns!

And then came SummerSlam… and Reigns simply cheated to win.

This turned more fans off. Reigns is still very popular, but the frustration with the long-term Bloodline story – and the clear signs WWE had no plan on how to end it, and simply wanted to milk Reigns’ reign as long as possible – continued to build.

There was light at the end of the tunnel, though, in the form of WrestleMania 40 and the lead-in Royal Rumble. It would give fans some clarity on what the future held for Reigns, after The Rock’s appearance in early January which hinted at the long-awaited match between the pair finally happening.

With CM Punk and Rhodes in the final two, the options were clear. If Punk won, he would pick Seth Rollins for his secondary world title; if Rhodes won, well, he had to ‘finish the story’, right? The catchphrase has been used to the point of becoming a meme at this point, and is part of the promotion for the new WWE video game, which features Rhodes on the cover.

And so when Rhodes won the Rumble, and pointed at Reigns’ luxury box in the stadium stands, we had our answer. Rhodes was ready to finish the story.

…and yet here we are. This time Rhodes wasn’t cheated out of the title; he just decided he doesn’t want to wrestle for it at the biggest show of the year, which makes even less sense.

What changed?

For a start, Punk got injured in the Rumble, tearing his triceps. He wasn’t going to win the match anyway – it looks almost certain he was going to win the men’s Elimination Chamber match in Perth later this month, earning the right to face Rollins – but suddenly Rollins, who is both very popular and actually appears every week on TV, needed a high-quality opponent.

But it’s also connected to the horrific Vince McMahon allegations, according to well-connected veteran reporter Dave Meltzer, pointing to The Rock constantly plugging the Reigns match in media interviews over the past month.

“Dwayne (The Rock) pushed super hard for it,” Meltzer wrote on his newsletter’s forum.

“The card changed when Punk & Brock 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. Shit happens with Vince and Punk, the Vince thing ends up worse than they thought and they changed 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.”

This makes complete sense, because it explains why Rhodes’ character would suddenly backflip on wanting to challenge Reigns.

Instead, nobody looks good with the way the story was told. Rhodes looks ridiculous for effectively telling – not just accepting it, but actively making it happen – The Rock to waltz in and take the match he’d been fighting for over the past 12 months. Rollins looks ridiculous because Reigns, in the same Smackdown promo, tore down Rollins’ world title and explained why it doesn’t matter as much as his does.

Even The Rock looks bad, because the current WWE fanbase is much more invested in Rhodes’ story. At a non-televised show this weekend, The Rock was heavily booed by the crowd as they watched highlights of Smackdown, indicating the fans are turning against the storyline.

It’s possible this was intentional, and WWE knew the Rock-Reigns match would become unpopular, and Rhodes will backflip on his backflip and make the match a triple threat (which also ensures Rock doesn’t have to wrestle a full one-on-one match, which is a question mark given his age). But why would you do it this way, making so many people in the match look bad?

We may be proven wrong, especially when plans can change, but it seems much more likely the intention is for a Rock-Reigns match to main event night two of WrestleMania, fan reaction be damned. Maybe they’ll be heavily booed; maybe the people willing to spend the money to head to the event will support it nonetheless, like they have for almost every WWE decision over the last two years.

And maybe Reigns will win, and Rhodes will face him at next year’s WrestleMania or at SummerSlam or a Saudi Arabia show, and finally dethrone him. But this is twice now WWE has walked up to the precipice of a huge moment its fans were demanding, and then back-pedalled in a shocking way. And it risks turning more of the fanbase that is left against the company.

As an unnamed former world champion told Fightful Select: “The Rock vs. Roman made sense several years ago when we were running back Roman and Lesnar repeatedly. It could have made sense this year had Cody won the title last year. This is one of the few years it just doesn’t make sense in any capacity.”

“The Rock eroded his trust with the comic and superhero community, with the film community, maybe with the football community, and might do it with the one he has almost universal goodwill with. He’s not a bad guy, don’t mistake that or get me wrong – he’s a great guy. However, bad timing and overexposure and fatigue will make fools of us all. You have to know when to take a back seat.

“I truly believe that The Rock wasn’t being malicious. Not being malicious with intent and actions not having malicious repercussions aren’t exclusive.”

To be clear – the problem is not the match itself. It is, inaurgably, a huge deal, and makes sense when you look at the whole Bloodline storyline holistically.

But the way Rhodes’ story has been told, twice now, makes little to no sense. They could’ve gotten to this exact moment much more easily if The Rock had simply won the Rumble, or even if The Rock had come out and challenged Reigns for the other night of WrestleMania.

And moments like this are why so many fans, turned off the product over the last decade, have made a mockery of the WWE supporter catchcry “let it play out”.

Because it has rarely played out the way the fans wanted.