WWE is Fighting Its Fans in the Lead-Up to Another WrestleMania
The storytelling is more chaotic—and more thrilling—than ever.
WrestleMania XL, this year’s edition of WWE’s grandest spectacle, will be the most financially successful ever. The company has regularly set records for tickets, merchandising, Peacock streams, and sponsorships since its return to live events in 2021. More than 90,000 tickets were sold to April’s two-night event in Philadelphia on one day, another record. In the last week, WWE has confirmed that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, one of the biggest stars in pro wrestling history, will be there seemingly to wrestle for the first time in 11 years.
Yet, WWE has spent the last 11 days in a storytelling quagmire of its own creation that has quickly turned the biggest event of all time into another war with wrestling’s most passionate and vocal fans. It’s the kind of meta face-off that can only exist in the surreal universe of pro wrestling, where everyone—including the fans—is working an angle to get what they want.
From hero to villain
Brace yourself for some necessary and partially abbreviated context. Between 2014 and 2020, WWE spent an ungodly amount of narrative and promotional energy trying to make Roman Reigns into “The Guy,” or the next heroic face of the company as John Cena transitioned to more Hollywood work. Reigns is part of a long lineage of wrestlers—some legitimate relatives, others “cousins” in a less genetic sense—and always looked the part of a WWE star. Unfortunately for the company, many older, male, and extremely online fans thought Reign’s “push,” the industry term for being prioritized as a main character, came on too strong and too fast to the detriment of other favorites.
After years of clunky storytelling (a hallmark of late-era Vince McMahon WWE) that never quite served Reigns as a character, the audience started to come around when the man playing Reigns, Joe Anoa’i, revealed he had cancer for a second time in 2018. He later announced that his cancer was in remission and returned to the ring in 2019. But once the COVID-19 pandemic expanded in the States in March 2020, Anoa’i smartly took time off until August.
Since Reigns returned as an on-screen character, he’s once again been WWE’s preeminent figure. But for the past four years, Reigns has been a villainous heel character surrounded by The Bloodline, a stable made up of his real-life cousins. As these things go in pro wrestling, Reigns finally became the lead character WWE wanted him to be by no longer acting like the heroic lead character. Reigns hasn’t been pinned in a singles match since his return and dispatched essentially every other WWE star during his now-1,257-day title run. The storyline has made bigger stars out of Reigns’ cousins, twins Jey and Jimmy Uso and their younger brother Solo, as well as many of the heroic characters who dared to face off with The Bloodline.
An extended reign of terror naturally requires an emerging hero. Since WrestleMania 38 in 2022, that hero has been Cody Rhodes. The son of iconic wrestler and creative genius Dusty Rhodes, Cody was long-famous for flaming out in WWE in the mid-2010s and eventually leading the creation of AEW, the upstart competitor to WWE bankrolled by Tony Khan. After a still-bizarre break-up with the company he helped build, Rhodes re-signed with WWE as a much bigger star, garnered widespread fan sympathy for wrestling with an insane injury, and scored a title match with Reigns as 2023’s WrestleMania 39—where nearly every person in the audience thought he’d vanquish the evil champion and “finish the story” that his dad started decades prior. Then he lost.
In the past year, WWE storylines have continued to focus on these two men. Spooked by a near loss, Reigns has grown more paranoid and elusive, only wrestling a few times in 10 months. Rhodes, meanwhile, has grown into a bigger and more protected heroic figure—essentially, the guy WWE wanted Reigns to be in 2014. It’s been clear that these two were headed for another showdown, presumably at WrestleMania XL, the aforementioned biggest show ever. There’s no better place for one of the best villains of all time with an insane winning streak to finally, truly lose.
The only problem? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Rock bottom
On top of being a huge star in WWE and Hollywood, The Rock is Reigns’ (non-blood) cousin. Naturally, then, fans have been waiting for The Rock to re-emerge in WWE storylines as a potential foil to Reigns. The company has teased the showdown a few times since 2020, most recently on the first SmackDown of 2024. TKO, WWE’s parent company, announced that The Rock would be joining its board of directors as part of the big Netflix deal (and cover for the atrocities allegedly committed by the now-ousted Vince McMahon). Even as late as that announcement two weeks ago, I suspect most WWE fans would say they were excited about the possibility of The Rock and Reigns squaring off in the ring at some point.
Then “some point” suddenly became WrestleMania XL in the most incoherent possible way.
A few days after The Rock joined the TKO board, Rhodes won the Royal Rumble match, giving him a storyline ticket to punch at Mania against the champion of his choosing. Right after his win, Rhodes gestured to Reigns, seated in a luxury box, thereby confirming the much-anticipated rematch was on. But then a few nights later on Raw, Rhodes was ensnared in a storyline with Seth Rollins, that show’s main champion and a long-time foe of both Rhodes and Reigns. While Rollins was clearly slated to face a returning CM Punk at WrestleMania XL, Punk’s injury in the Rumble match combined with The Rock’s return created the conditions for storyline chaos. 1
Last Friday on SmackDown, Rhodes confronted Reigns. After running down all the obvious reasons why the two should wrestle again, Cody explained that he was still “coming” for Reigns—just not a WrestleMania. Moments later, The Rock hit the ring, shared an awkward embrace with Rhodes, and faced off with Reigns. The visual storytelling couldn’t have been more clear. Rhodes, the would-be hero of the story who had the power to choose another match with Reigns and finish the story, was literally stepping aside so that a more famous 51-year-old mostly retired guy could take the spotlight.
While the live audience generally celebrated the moment because they were caught up in the thrilling surprise of seeing the unannounced Rock, fans watching or following online revolted, quickly. “#WeWantCody” trended on Twitter all weekend. The segments uploaded to YouTube were downvoted at a healthy clip. Fans at Saturday and Sunday live shows booed the replayed clips. Tons of non-wrestling news sources wrote about the fan outcry. Anonymously sourced reports within wrestling media circles started building a narrative about The Rock’s soft coup of WWE at a vulnerable place amid McMahon’s alleged evil. Suddenly, The Rock’s return was not just about him stealing Rhodes’ spot in the storyline but rather him grabbing control of the company at the behest of the non-wrestling corporate suits leading parent company TKO.2
It’s long been thought that blurring of lines between reality and “reality” is where wrestling thrives. Large swaths of the fanbase care just as much, if not more, about the behind-the-scenes politicking between performers and storyline development. But there’s no real division between those two realities anymore, if there ever really was. The meta-discourse about Cody Runnels, the performer, being screwed by Dwayne Johnson, TKO executives, or anyone else is just as part of the story as whatever hackneyed on-screen rationale WWE provides to push The Rock into a main-event spot.
The last time this happened was a decade ago when fan support for Daniel Bryan forced WWE and McMahon to change their WrestleMania XXX plans involving a returning-from-Hollywood Dave Bautista. That storyline also embedded fan frustration and backstage politics into an on-screen storyline about corporate executives holding talent down. The company has been chasing the high of the Bryan WrestleMania XXX storyline for a decade, to the point of trying it with Reigns on multiple occasions to tepid results.
On Monday’s Raw, Rhodes notably didn’t address his bizarre choice to stand down, only further fueling the fire that the performer, not the character, was being forced to step aside due to conflicting corporate interests. The live audience was littered with #WeWantCody signs, which were either the result of organic fan frustration or complete corporate manipulation. Mid-week, industry reporting continued to focus on a Rock-Reigns match, with an increased focus on the sponsorships acquired as a result of the former’s participation. Dave Meltzer, the industry’s most famous reporter, noted that Johnson didn’t care if people booed him if money were to be made. Those talking points contributed to a prevailing sense that WWE (or TKO) was moving ahead with the controversial decision no matter how mad it made most of the fans.
Kickoff carnage
Thursday brought a new pivot point in the story. The Rock went on The Pat McAfee show to critique “Cody crybabies” who were big mad online. WWE’s WrestleMania XL Kickoff in Las Vegas could go down as one of the most significant events in modern wrestling history. Reigns announced he would face The Rock at Mania. Despite the previous on-screen tension between the two, The Rock came on stage, amid a sea of boos, to celebrate their Bloodline and boast about the potential KPIs were they to tussle in Philadelphia in April.
Rhodes interrupted the cousins with an immediately iconic line: “This right here is bullshit.” This referred not to the television storyline, because in-storyline, Rhodes is the person who created the conditions for Reigns and The Rock to wrestle in the first place. Instead, this referred to the alleged corporate maneuvering of it all, where two hand-picked stars were throwing their weight around to marginalize a performer who could challenge their status.
Rhodes announced he would face Reigns at Mania XL, leading to a scuffle between the three stars and Rollins, who is now aligned with Rhodes as the two full-time performers fighting the good fight against the extremely part-time corporate nepo-babies. Reigns and The Rock left the event by intimidating Triple H, an on-screen and legitimate creative executive, to “fix” the problem.
Some are speculating that this was WWE’s plan the entire time. Some are suggesting that the company (and The Rock) caved to the rising tide of social media outrage and pivoted to a new story. As with all things wrestling, I tend to think the truth is somewhere in the middle. There’s still no in-text storyline explanation for why Rhodes stepped aside seven days ago and then called bullshit yesterday, which suggests some creative changes. But the metatextual storyline is now so powerful, and the clips from Thursday’s Kickoff so electric, that it doesn’t matter. Rhodes is now the avatar for fan frustration on multiple levels and all roads lead to a satisfying WrestleMania XL win.
This is TV Plus, a newsletter about television written by Cory Barker, a media studies professor and veteran blogger. Readers can expect dispatches on industry trends, overlooked shows, and historical antecedents to current events.
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As usual, CM Punk ruins everything.
One might say that the hierarchy in WWE was about to change.