The Rock’s return to compete against Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns in the WrestleMania 39 main event was something that WWE had hoped for almost a year.
The Rock reportedly told WWE that he didn’t think he had enough time to prepare for a Mania main event match and declined the match, though he left the door open for next year.
Cody Rhodes will face Roman Reigns at WrestleMania to defend the Undisputed WWE Universal Title.
WWE had plans to separate the Undisputed WWE Universal Title – WWE Championship and Universal Championship, when The Rock’s participation at WrestleMania was still a possibility.
Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Cody Rhodes for the WWE Title would have taken place on the first night, and Roman Reigns vs. The Rock for the Universal Title would have been the main event on the second night.
Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Radio confirmed that this was WrestleMania’s original plan before The Rock made the decision to pull from the match.
Meltzer: “The key to this is they are not creating a new championship on the Saturday night show.”
Bryan Alvarez: “They’re not creating a new championship?”
Meltzer: “Yeah, there was talk of doing the second title on Saturday night.”
Alvarez: “I’d always been under the impression that Roman was defending both titles.”
Meltzer: “No, if it was Roman and The Rock, they were gonna create a championship on Saturday night that Cody probably would have ended up winning. But it was Cody, Drew or Rollins that was gonna come out of that one. Because they wanna go back to two titles….Obviously, at WrestleMania, it’s for both belts. They did explain, again they did say it’s now two belts again. It’s not one belt. It’s back to two belts. They are, at some point, going to separate them.
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
