When The Rock and Roman Reigns squared off at an open-to-the-public fan and media event on Thursday night from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, it was anticipated that WWE would officially announce their matchup for WrestleMania 40 this April.
Triple H, Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Bianca Belair, and Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley were also present.
They did face off at the event, but the match was not made official. Instead, Cody Rhodes announced that he would challenge Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at WrestleMania 40.
According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE booked the venue weeks in advance because they expected a large turnout with The Rock appearing.
Meltzer wrote, “As it turned out, they greatly overshot. Even with it being free and Johnson being there, the estimate was only 2,000 to 3,000 people were there, but they were very vocal.”
Although there was some speculation that WWE would announce WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas, this did not occur, most likely due to the large media presence in town for the Super Bowl and an attempt to capitalize on that.
