Report: Roman Reigns beating Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania was ‘always the plan’

A report from shortly after WrestleMania 39 — which you don’t need me to remind you ended with Roman Reigns retaining the Undisputed WWE Universal championship over Cody Rhodes thanks in large part to a Solo Sikoa Samoan Spike — was that the outcome was set “several weeks ago”.

This week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter doesn’t get specific about the timeframe, but seems to indicate that WWE knew Reigns was leaving SoFi Stadium as champion for longer than just a few weeks. Dave Meltzer wrote:

“Reigns winning was always the plan, although it was kept secret and almost nobody knew.”

At first glance, that would mean fans looking to blame Vince McMahon for everything right now can’t put this one on the Chairman. But talk of giving Roman a historic run with the belts goes back to before McMahon was resigned last summer due to investigations into his alleged sexual misconduct and the hush money deals he used to keep those allegations quiet, so it’s not inconceivable Triple H was just sticking to his father-in-law’s script on the company’s biggest story.

Either way, sounds like we were always going to be debating that decision this week, which was probably at least part of WWE’s reasoning for booking it that way.