Posted on 4/01/124 by Colin Vassallo
ESPN’s Marc Raimondi and Mike Coppinger wrote a detailed
look at how WWE had to switch things around and change their
planned Roman Reigns vs The Rock match at WrestleMania 40
after fans turned on The Rock and supported Cody Rhodes.
Featuring quotes from Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Rock’s writer
Brian Gewirtz, and WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H, the
team behind the storylines admitted that they had to call an
audible and listen to what the people actually wanted.
Triple H told ESPN that things are run differently now that
he’s in charge.
“My career, I learned from being here, but there were things
along the way that I always thought I would do differently,”
Levesque said. “In this time now, I get to make those calls
and with a large team of people. Whether people will want to
believe it or not, I think we were sort of looking at this
as here’s where we’re going to go to get this started and it
has the opportunity of going this way or that way.”
He said that they call audibles “every single week”
depending on reactions because this is what the business is
all about.
“The beautiful thing with this group and with Cody and Roman
and Rock especially, everybody’s got their ear to the
ground. And then we all just get together and figure the
shit out,” Triple H noted.
Meanwhile, to make this all happen, The Rock had to get on
board as well, especially since it meant turning heel.
Brian Gewirtz said that this is not The Rock’s first rodeo
and he’s all too familiar with the “card subject to change”
term.
“I think he went into this with Rock vs. Roman, we have like
95 pages of merchandise and all these kinds of things,”
Gewirtz said, adding that this is one of those things where
“WWE needs to do what WWE needs to do.”