Sounds like Cody was supposed to be more excited to hand his WrestleMania spot to The Rock

We’re still waiting for the behind-the-scenes documentary on WrestleMania XL that WWE promised us, But we keep hearing things that make us more excited to see what they decide to show us about how the show’s shifting main events came to fruition.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s longtime business parter Brian Gewirtz gave us another intriguing anecdote during his appearance on The Masked Man Show podcast (the same interview where Gewirtz shot down a rumor that the ‘Mania doc hasn’t been released because it’s awaiting Johnson’s approval).

In setting up the latest version of a story we’ve heard at least twice now — namely, how The Rock came to pitch his heel turn — Gewirtz says that Royal Rumble winner Cody Rhodes was supposed to excitedly give Rocky his spot in WrestleMania’s Undisputed WWE Universal title match. That Rhodes couldn’t hide his actual emotions on that February night in Birmingham, Alabama seems to have ultimately helped him “finish the story” in Philadelphia:

“[WWE’s documentary] covers a lot of that stuff so I don’t wanna get too deep into it and spoil the doc, but I will say, and again, I will say this is my opinion. I will say Cody 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 ass. 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*ckin’ A! Go get ‘em Rock! You’re gonna get your ass 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, [New York Knicks’ player] 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 and it’s talked about in the doc but to touch on it here a little bit is we have two choices here, and by the way, so Rock...our conversation from post-Alabama and yeah, it’s essentially, to sum it up, it’s like, ‘We have two choices here. We can push forward,’ like WWE in the past has often done, which is like, yeah, let ‘em get it out of their system and eventually, we’ll do what we need to do. Or, we could do something pretty incredible, because we’ve always, always, always have been, in terms of putting promos together of like, ‘Ah, if I was a heel again, I could have so much fun. I never actually pulled the trigger,’ but it’s also been on the back of Rock’s mind as far as like, hmm, can we? Is it possible?

“And he’s essentially brought the idea in of, ‘You know what? Let me talk to you about Vegas for a minute’ and I’ll leave it at that. But it was certainly something like, yeah, a choice needed to be made. Go ahead and push forward and they’ll hopefully — it’ll die down and blah, blah, blah. Or, not only react to it, but make it better and create something that the world is just not ready for in a good way.”

Can’t wait to hear more of Cody’s side of this story... whenever Rock approves WWE’s documentary finally comes out.