Source: https://theboard.f4wonline.com/forum/the-board/pro-wrestling/5656091-lmao-cody?p=5656350#post5656350
“Dwayne pushed super hard for it. Read last week’s issue and this week’s. The card changed when Punk & Brock were out and all the dominoes fell. Dwayne already wanted it and they felt they now needed it as well. Felt this was better to change the news flow away from Vince.
Cody was the plan. Dwayne was going to face him later, maybe next year’s Mania, maybe Saudi. Shit happens with Vince and Punk, the Vince thing ends up worse than they thought and they changed the plan. I literally didn’t know until yesterday that it could change and then I was told it’s under lock. But 100% it was Punk vs. Seth and Cody vs. Reigns until Punk got hurt.”
I barely follow WWE news, and haven’t watched anything since switching to NJPW in 2017, and then AEW when it launched; but I always thought from what i’d heard of big news that Rock v Roman was a match that was always going to happen, and assumed that the only place it would ever happen was Wrestlemania.
So as a mostly disconnected, not even casual fan, I figured Cody winning the Rumble and picking Rollins was always the plan, otherwise they’d what, wait until next year for Rock-Roman?
I wonder if that only changed once Punk imploded, got himself fired and then became available for WWE again?
Wait, have they split the titles? I thought Roman was the only champion they had.
The Universal and WWE championships are both still on Roman as the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship.
Back in April HHH came out and did the ol ‘you deserve a champion who’ll be here’ shtick and created a new World Heavyweight Championship (with a new title lineage, as the old World Heavyweight Championship’s lineage was folded into the WWE Championship) which is currently held by Seth Rollins (it’s first and only holder so far).
99% of viewers acknowledge the World title as the ‘B’ belt to the Undisputed one(s) given it was literally made as the consolation prize belt.
I remember it now, but wow I had completely forgotten that ever happened.