This past weekend was an interesting test for WWE’s head of creative, Paul Levesque.
The plan for WrestleMania, the company’s biggest show of the year, was for Roman Reigns to hopefully defend his WWE universal championship against Dwayne Johnson, the 50-year-old biggest star of the modern era, or Cody Rhodes, one of the founders of rival All Elite Wrestling. Rhodes left AEW in early 2022 when his contract expired, then showed up in WWE and immediately told a story about how his goal from childhood was to win the WWE championship. He told the story about his father, Dusty Rhodes, never winning the title even though he defeated then champion Superstar Billy Graham via count out in 1977 at Madison Square Garden. Rhodes’s older brother, Dustin (aka Goldust), also never won the championship, so the idea for his title chase was his dream from the first time he saw a photo on his home wall of the ’77 match.
Johnson declined the match, feeling with his many other commitments, including the launch of the XFL, that he didn’t have the time to get into ring shape to do a match of the caliber he wanted. So it was Rhodes put in the spot.
