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.”
