Do you think these WrestleMania 40 plans are a work? Let us know in the comments!
February 2024's BIGGEST MOVIE RELEASES! | What's On At Cineworld Cinemas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3c96DYQpG0
More wrestling news on https://wrestletalk.com/
WWE Manipulating Fans? WrestleMania 40 MASTER Work, Cody Rhodes, The Rock | WrestleTalk
#WWE #WrestleMania40 #CodyRhodes
Subscribe to WrestleTalk Podcasts https://bit.ly/3pEAEIu
Subscribe to partsFUNknown for lists, fantasy booking & more https://bit.ly/32JJsCv
Subscribe to NoRollsBarred https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UQPZe-8v4_UP1uxi4Mv6A
Subscribe to WrestleTalk https://bit.ly/3gKdNK3
SUBSCRIBE TO THEM ALL! Make sure to enable ALL push notifications!
Watch the latest wrestling news: https://shorturl.at/pAIV3
Buy WrestleTalk Merch here! https://wrestleshop.com/
Follow WrestleTalk:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_WrestleTalk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WrestleTalk.Official
Patreon: https://goo.gl/2yuJpo
WrestleTalk Podcast on iTunes: https://goo.gl/7advjX
WrestleTalk Podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uKx6HD
Written by: Luke Owen
Presented by: Luke Owen
Thumbnail by: Brandon Syres
Image Sourcing by: Brandon Syres
About WrestleTalk:
Welcome to the official WrestleTalk YouTube channel! WrestleTalk covers the sport of professional wrestling - including WWE TV shows (both WWE Raw & WWE SmackDown LIVE), PPVs (such as Royal Rumble, WrestleMania & SummerSlam), AEW All Elite Wrestling, Impact Wrestling, ROH, New Japan, and more. Subscribe and enable ALL notifications for the latest wrestling WWE reviews and wrestling news.
Sources used for research:
Youtube Channel Comments Policy
We appreciate the comments and opinions our viewers provide. Do note that all comments are subject to YouTube auto-moderation and manual moderation review. We encourage opinions and discussion, but harassment, hate speech, bullying and other abusive posts will not be tolerated. Decisions on comment removal are made by the Community Manager. Please email us at support@wrestletalk.com with any questions or concerns.
February 2024's BIGGEST MOVIE RELEASES! | What's On At Cineworld Cinemas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3c96DYQpG0
More wrestling news on https://wrestletalk.com/
WWE Manipulating Fans? WrestleMania 40 MASTER Work, Cody Rhodes, The Rock | WrestleTalk
#WWE #WrestleMania40 #CodyRhodes
Subscribe to WrestleTalk Podcasts https://bit.ly/3pEAEIu
Subscribe to partsFUNknown for lists, fantasy booking & more https://bit.ly/32JJsCv
Subscribe to NoRollsBarred https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5UQPZe-8v4_UP1uxi4Mv6A
Subscribe to WrestleTalk https://bit.ly/3gKdNK3
SUBSCRIBE TO THEM ALL! Make sure to enable ALL push notifications!
Watch the latest wrestling news: https://shorturl.at/pAIV3
Buy WrestleTalk Merch here! https://wrestleshop.com/
Follow WrestleTalk:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_WrestleTalk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WrestleTalk.Official
Patreon: https://goo.gl/2yuJpo
WrestleTalk Podcast on iTunes: https://goo.gl/7advjX
WrestleTalk Podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3uKx6HD
Written by: Luke Owen
Presented by: Luke Owen
Thumbnail by: Brandon Syres
Image Sourcing by: Brandon Syres
About WrestleTalk:
Welcome to the official WrestleTalk YouTube channel! WrestleTalk covers the sport of professional wrestling - including WWE TV shows (both WWE Raw & WWE SmackDown LIVE), PPVs (such as Royal Rumble, WrestleMania & SummerSlam), AEW All Elite Wrestling, Impact Wrestling, ROH, New Japan, and more. Subscribe and enable ALL notifications for the latest wrestling WWE reviews and wrestling news.
Sources used for research:
Youtube Channel Comments Policy
We appreciate the comments and opinions our viewers provide. Do note that all comments are subject to YouTube auto-moderation and manual moderation review. We encourage opinions and discussion, but harassment, hate speech, bullying and other abusive posts will not be tolerated. Decisions on comment removal are made by the Community Manager. Please email us at support@wrestletalk.com with any questions or concerns.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 Turns out this whole Cody Rhodes thing has been a work all along.
00:04 WWE have been manipulating their fans.
00:07 Or are wrestling media the ones getting worked?
00:11 I'm Luke Owen and this is the WrestleTalk News.
00:15 Well, start to 2024, eh?
00:22 About a week and a half ago we all felt like we knew the direction heading into WrestleMania.
00:26 Cody Rhodes had won the Royal Rumble and he was going to face Roman Reigns, while CM Punk
00:30 would face Seth Rollins for the World Heavyweight Championship.
00:33 But it then got revealed that Punk got hurt during the Rumble, so some plans had to change.
00:38 But sure, while that plan over there was changing, Cody was still going to face Roman, right?
00:44 Well, no.
00:46 What ended up happening was Cody announced that while he does want to "finish the story",
00:50 he wasn't going to face Roman Reigns at WrestleMania.
00:53 Instead The Rock came out and lined himself up to be the guy to face Roman Reigns.
00:57 This led to a huge fan uproar with the hashtag #WeWantCody trending on Twitter all weekend.
01:04 The chants for Cody were thunderous during Raw this past Monday, with even chants of
01:09 "Rocky Sucks" which both Seth Rollins and Michael Cole acknowledged on TV.
01:14 There were some reports that WWE were handing out the We Want Cody signs, but fans have
01:18 taken to Twitter and told Fightful that this was a fan-driven thing.
01:23 What hasn't been shot down though was that WWE manipulated the audio during the main
01:28 event of Rhodes vs. Shinsuke Nakamura to drown out the boos against The Rock.
01:33 It's kind of hard to piece together a timeline of events of how, why and when things were
01:40 changed, but according to Fightful Select, the report at the Rumble and even following
01:44 the Rumble was that "Cody will face Roman".
01:47 Hence why, Cody won the Rumble!
01:50 And he was always supposed to win the Rumble, he had a t-shirt already printed backstage
01:54 with his name on it saying he won the Royal Rumble.
01:57 Cody vs. Roman was even the case leading up to Smackdown.
02:01 Those involved found out on Friday, the day of Smackdown, that this Cody vs. Roman plan
02:06 was pivoting to Rock vs. Roman.
02:08 However there is an interesting wrinkle in all of these reports.
02:13 Fightful reported over the weekend that some believed the plan was going to be changed
02:18 to Rock vs. Roman at the Royal Rumble, as there was new Rock-themed, head-of-the-table
02:23 merchandise prototypes at the Rumble event which then would have gone on sale at WrestleMania.
02:28 It was then reported via Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio that this match between The
02:32 Rock and Roman Reigns at WrestleMania had been decided as far back as January 3rd, when
02:38 The Rock joined the TKO board of directors - which was well before Cody won the Royal
02:44 Rumble and CM Punk got injured at the Royal Rumble.
02:47 So if we're looking at a worldview where WWE knew they were going to do Rock vs. Roman
02:52 at Mania, then why did Rhodes win the Rumble?
02:56 Surely that sounds like a massive, creative blunder and fumble.
03:01 Well according to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio, it's been 100% of work
03:07 dating back for a while.
03:09 Meltzer was referring to the crowd reactions on Raw and WWE's acknowledgement of them.
03:14 He highlighted that both Ricochet and Logan Paul were tweeting about #WeWantCody over
03:19 the weekend, how WWE focused on the Cody signs, how commentary constantly mentioned that this
03:24 was a controversial choice, and how they kept saying nothing has been made official yet.
03:31 One of Pat McAfee's opening lines on Raw was, "The whole world is talking about WWE."
03:37 Now all of that seems fairly obvious, right?
03:41 Like in the past WWE have been known to ignore fans.
03:44 I'm so sorry Zack Ryder, I promise you we did try our best.
03:47 But this new version of WWE isn't quite the same stubborn beast.
03:52 After how much coverage the story got over the weekend, of course WWE were going to acknowledge
03:57 all of that.
03:58 How could they not?
03:59 The WWE Insider had even reported that WWE were monitoring the replies, retweets and
04:04 polls on social media about Rock vs. Roman.
04:08 Because again, if WWE were planning on doing Roman vs. Rock at Mania, why did Cody win
04:13 the Rumble?
04:14 Why not have Punk or The Rock win it?
04:17 I know there are still people clinging to this idea that Cody winning was an audible
04:21 because Punk got hurt, but it's been reported by multiple outlets that's not the case.
04:25 May I remind you of the t-shirt that was already printed?
04:29 Well here's where things get really interesting.
04:33 On Twitter Dave Meltzer noted, "The idea that Paul Levesque didn't know about Rock
04:37 signing with the company and him wrestling Reigns when he booked the Rumble is clearly
04:42 not the case.
04:43 He knew exactly what he was doing."
04:46 Ah I get it, I see.
04:49 It's Triple H rebelling against The Rock and the suits in charge of TKO.
04:53 He did it for the fans.
04:54 Not so.
04:55 In a follow up tweet in response to a fan asking if Triple H did this to mess with The
04:59 Rock's plan, Meltzer added, "Everyone was on the same page.
05:03 They did one of the best jobs of manipulation in history and should be congratulated for
05:10 it."
05:11 When someone asked if we, the fans, were all getting worked, Meltzer replied, "If you
05:16 think WWE were screwing Cody, yes.
05:19 This was all part of the bigger plan."
05:22 Meltzer's argument that WWE's mindset was to recreate the magic of Bryan Danielson's
05:27 rise to the main event of WrestleMania 30.
05:29 Only this time it would be on purpose.
05:31 Stop trying to tell me it wasn't the plan all along, Road Dogg.
05:34 We all know it wasn't the plan.
05:36 For those of you who weren't watching at the time or have forgotten as it was 10 years
05:39 ago, I can barely remember what happened 10 days ago.
05:42 Bryan Danielson - or Daniel Bryan as he was known in WWE - was a guy that the company
05:46 held down from the main event scene despite fans telling them that they wanted to see
05:50 him pushed into the main event scene.
05:52 During the summer of 2013 he was screwed out of the WWE Championship by the heel faction
05:57 The Authority, but there wasn't a plan to follow up on that.
06:01 Instead he was set to be moved into a WrestleMania program with Sheamus to play off their 28th
06:06 second match at WrestleMania 29.
06:08 Meanwhile, the returning Batista would main event WrestleMania instead against his former
06:12 Evolution stablemate Randy Orton.
06:15 Batista won the 2014 Rumble, and the crowd booed.
06:19 Not only did they boo the finish, when they realised that Bryan wasn't in the match
06:22 at all, they booed the whole Rumble.
06:24 Paul Rey Mysterio got booed because he was number 30 and wasn't named Daniel Bryan.
06:28 The fans also chanted for Daniel Bryan during the incredibly boring world title match between
06:33 Randy Orton and John Cena.
06:35 The audience were telling WWE they were sick of this same old s*** and they wanted someone
06:41 new and that new was called Daniel Bryan.
06:44 Oli Davis and I recently reviewed that show in full over on our Patreon page so please
06:48 do go and check that out.
06:49 The crowd reaction, coupled with CM Punk walking out on the company the following night, set
06:53 a change in motion where Triple H, who was originally supposed to face Punk at Mania,
06:58 moved into a program with Bryan that would pivot him into the main event of WrestleMania
07:02 30, which he won.
07:04 It was collectively called the Yes Movement.
07:07 Now look, there are some differences between Cody Rhodes and Daniel Bryan.
07:12 While Bryan was very popular in 2013 going into 2014, he was not the number one merch
07:17 seller.
07:18 He was not reaching the same levels as John Cena or CM Punk, he was even below The Ultimate
07:23 Warrior in early 2014 in terms of merch sales.
07:26 He also didn't win the Royal Rumble, as we just noted, he wasn't even in the bloody
07:30 thing.
07:31 Key of all, Bryan was not the handpicked guy to be the face of the company.
07:36 WWE did not want to push Daniel Bryan, but the fans forced their hand and forced Daniel
07:42 Bryan into the main event.
07:44 Cody, on the other hand, is the number one merch seller, did win the Royal Rumble twice
07:50 and is clearly the handpicked guy to be the face of the company.
07:53 He also never loses, which is something that Bryan did loads.
07:56 But it is working.
07:59 At least that's what Dave Meltzer is arguing and why he thinks it should be congratulated.
08:03 Even by our own metrics, our podcast review of Smackdown where Cody sidestepped for The
08:07 Rock is one of the most watched reviews we've ever done.
08:11 I haven't seen this level of messages coming in angry about Cody not getting pushed since,
08:17 well, Roman beat him at Mania 39.
08:20 Cody was more over on Monday's Raw than he was one week ago.
08:25 Ticket sales for that episode of Raw rose following Smackdown because fans wanted to
08:29 go and voice their displeasure over The Rock.
08:33 This isn't a Lex Luger situation where the blundering booking made him under.
08:37 This has made Cody the most over and popular act in the company.
08:42 So there you have it.
08:44 It was all one big work.
08:46 And isn't that the magic of being a wrestling fan?
08:49 To be worked?
08:50 I know it's nice knowing all the backstage ins and outs, but at the end of the day, we're
08:55 all marks.
08:57 And being worked is part of being a mark.
09:01 But it might not all be that simple.
09:04 In a new update from Fightful Select, the idea that this was all an elaborate work is
09:09 not as cut and dry as Mr. Meltzer is claiming.
09:13 Sean Ross Sapp writes, "If this is or was a work, there were numerous parties that had
09:18 not been clued in on such as of last Friday."
09:22 He adds, "While we can't speak to the grander situation and who planned what specifically,
09:27 we can speak to Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, CM Punk, the creative team, producers and
09:32 those around them.
09:34 They were not told that an elaborate, multifaceted work was the plan."
09:40 Fightful reiterate that Cody vs. Roman and Punk vs. Rollins were the plans for WrestleMania
09:46 at the Rumble.
09:47 SRS even says this was relayed directly to CM Punk.
09:52 So if this was a work all along, it would have been a work on them as well.
09:57 And WCW history will tell you that working the wrestlers never goes well.
10:02 So if Cody, Punk, Rollins, producers, creative and their friends didn't know, then who
10:08 did?
10:09 Fightful write, "The decision to pivot from Cody to The Rock went above Triple H and even
10:14 Nick Khan going right to the top with Marc Shapiro and Ari Emanuel."
10:19 Fightful Select confirm that plans for Roman vs. Rock do date back to early January, which
10:24 is why there was that prototype merchandise at the Rumble event.
10:28 They write, "A select group of people were informed Royal Rumble weekend that the direction
10:33 had changed."
10:34 But add this does not answer the "why" of "why was Cody booked to win the Rumble?"
10:39 if the plan was changing.
10:41 What we do know is the Smackdown announcement of Cody passing up Mania for The Rock led
10:46 to loud Rocky Sucks chants on Monday's Raw.
10:49 And WrestleVotes tweeted that while WWE were planning on leading into the viral nature
10:53 of the story, the chants totally threw certain people off - and that part of it was something
10:59 unexpected.
11:01 This has been corroborated by Fightful Select's report who note that WWE weren't necessarily
11:06 expecting the chants.
11:08 Someone who did see it coming, however, according to Fightful Select, is Cody Rhodes.
11:13 They write that Cody expressed to WWE that this would not get the desired reaction they
11:19 wanted - i.e. fans excited to see Rock vs. Roman, but he did the segment anyway.
11:24 They add that Cody was said to have been in a somber mood after.
11:29 So that's everything.
11:31 One side of the wrestling media is claiming this was all one big Worky McWorkface, and
11:36 quite a few others saying it isn't.
11:39 The truth of the matter will probably lie somewhere in the middle, and it remains to
11:42 be seen just how much clarity we'll get on this story in the coming weeks, months
11:48 and years.
11:49 What we do know for sure is that the press conference on Thursday is going to be a big
11:53 one for WWE.
11:55 Following Smackdown, the reported plan for Mania was Rock vs. Roman and Cody vs. Seth,
12:01 but Fightful add, "Options are being discussed moving forward following the fan reaction
12:06 over the weekend."
12:07 And speaking of plans, I didn't get a chance to talk about any of the other news in wrestling
12:11 which I had planned to do.
12:13 Brock Lesnar has been removed from the cover of 2K24's 40 Years of Mania edition after
12:18 being implicated in the Vince McMahon sex trafficking lawsuit, and there are reports
12:22 that 2K are working to remove both him and Vince from the game.
12:26 Speaking of that lawsuit, Ashley Mazzaro's lawyer has had some things to say about that,
12:30 WWE and Vince McMahon.
12:32 There's updates on the arrests of Cash Wheeler and Liv Morgan from last year, Julia will
12:36 reportedly delay her moves at WWE to help Rossi start a new promotion after he was fired
12:42 from Stardom, and yes this is also apparently true, Fox, Warner Brothers and Disney are
12:48 going to form like Voltron for a joint sports streaming service, but there's no word yet
12:53 on how that might affect All Elite Wrestling.
12:56 So to catch up on all of that massive news, please do go and check out WrestleTalk.com
13:01 for the latest.
13:02 And check out this episode of What's On at Cineworld Cinemas, hosted by myself and
13:06 Dan Leyton, where we talk about the new releases in February, including the Iron Claw.