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In case you missed it, WWE did a tremendous piece of business last night before a massive crowd at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, a group of fans that knew that they wouldn’t see a single match, and didn’t care one bit.
Of course, the proverbial main event of the evening was the face-off between Roman Reigns, The Rock and Cody Rhodes, with Seth Rollins left standing off to the side, both literally and figuratively.
To quickly recap, after a disastrous segment on last Friday’s Smackdown, where Dwayne Johnson made Cody Rhodes look like a sap by not doing what was clearly obvious and choosing Roman Reigns to finish the story, the backlash from fans worldwide slapped WWE square in the mouth. The anger of fans who felt that Johnson cut the line and ruined a fantastic long term story, crushing the company’s top babyface in the process, put WWE in a position where WrestleMania would be a train wreck if it were headlined by Roman Reigns vs. The Rock and Cody in some secondary position elsewhere.
The fans let WWE know how they felt at Monday’s Raw, and also at last night’s presser. It was no secret that the majority of fans, and probably the vast majority of fans, did not want to see Reigns-Rock. Plus, how would the match even be booked? Rock certainly shouldn’t beat Reigns and even more certainly not win the Title. That would have killed the years of momentum that Reigns built up to give to the person who took the strap from him (you know, Cody). So what, non-title? At Mania? Even if it were for the Heard Of The Table, man what a let down that scenario would have been to end the company’s biggest event of the year.
So, how did we get to that point? Johnson’s contract. It calls for him to wrestle in a top match at WrestleMania to make him a wealthier man. His clout and contract status in WWE gave him the right to play a card where he would be in a top match at the show and one of two things happened:
1) He played it and backfired badly on him and WWE.
2) He played it perfectly and he and a select group of individuals at the top of the company knew exactly what they were doing and played the situation brilliantly.
In either case, after heeling Dwayne Johnson with great vitriol over the last week, I will praise him now because after last night. Either he heard the legitimate hatred from the fans and realized that the only way that he could be a true babyface outside of the ring is by turning heel inside of it, or he knew all along that by glomming Cody’s spot last week he would make Cody an even bigger sympathetic babyface this week.
I could easily buy into the latter if the Smackdown segment wasn’t so badly done and damaging last week. My gut feeling is that what we saw last night was a course correction and if so, I credit Johnson (and maybe the top people in WWE/TKO for keeping the payment in place so that we could have a great Mania in a couple of months if it turns out that they made any concessions). We could have had a situation like we did with Daniel Bryan years back, where WWE blatantly ignored what the fans wanted but instead, the new braintrust did the exact opposite of what the former owner did. I give them massive credit for that if that is what went down. The business belongs to the fans, the companies are just the stewards of it.
Whatever the case, what seemed so bad and wrong a week ago now seems so great and exciting now because of the great piece of business that the three men did last night in Las Vegas.
After Roman said it was his call and that he wanted The Rock, I just hoped to myself that they were going somewhere good. If not, Cody would have been totally neutered because if the guy who won the Rumble doesn’t get to pick his match, he’s done and so is one of the company’s biggest PLEs of the year.
Instead, thankfully, Cody came out and staked his claim to Roman. They left wiggle room last Friday on Smackdown. It sure seems to me like they closed that all up last night. Cody has the right to fight Roman, and he exercised it. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be more swerves along the way, but they set up the match that almost everyone wanted to see last night.
Whatever the case, we are going where most of us wanted to go all along and whatever the motivation, Dwayne Johnson made that happen, so I will give him the credit for making Cody even more sympathetic than he already was.
Where does that leave Johnson? I know some people are saying in a tag match where he teams with Roman vs. Seth and Cody. I don’t see that one. To me, that doesn’t put more struggle in Cody’s fight. What does?
Well, after Rock mentioned his seat on the Board, the vibe I got immediately is that Rock will insert himself in Cody’s journey and wrestle him to finish night one of Mania (in the main event of course) with the plan being to weaken Cody before he takes on Roman in night two. Cody has to wrestle on night one while Roman waits and is rested for night two. If Cody overcomes that, my GOD what a finish to the story. People will be crying, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest.
The best part is, we can now just sit back and enjoy the ride that almost a week ago seemed impossible.
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