Dwayne Johnson Revealed That A Match Between The Rock And Roman Reigns At WrestleMania 39 Was ‘Locked’
The Rock #TheRock
Roman Reigns defeated Cody Rhodes on the second night of WrestleMania 39. It meant that the Tribal Chief’s reign atop WWE as the Undisputed WWE Universal Champion would continue on for quite some time, and as of now, he’s been able to say he’s the top dog in the company for more than 1,000 days.
While Rhodes was able to earn a main event spot by winning the Royal Rumble, there were rumors for some time that he wouldn’t be the one who took on Reigns at SoFi Stadium. Instead, that would have gone to The Rock, who is Reigns’ cousin. This obviously did not come to fruition, but during a cameo on The Pat McAfee Show on Friday afternoon, Dwayne Johnson revealed that there was an agreement in place to make it happen.
“The Rock headlining WrestleMania with Roman Reigns, SoFi Stadium, that was locked,” Johnson said. “We were doing it. No, we were doing it. But lemme just tell ya, so, in the beginning of 2022, Nick Khan … he was very instrumental in bringing Vince and I together. We all flew to L.A., we met, we sat.”
Johnson went on to say that, after an hour, the conversation turned to potentially putting him into a match against his cousin.
“We shook hands and we hugged, right there, all three of us at the table and said, ‘Let’s do this,’” Johnson continued. “So, then we had a year to really think about this, so the North Star thought was, ok, let’s not do something good, let’s do something great, let’s do something unprecedented.”
As he explained, the hope was to turn a WrestleMania match into “the beginning of something bigger,” which ended up being their downfall.
“We got really, really close, but we couldn’t actually nail what that thing was,” he said. “So we decided to put our pencils down, and then we agreed, hey, listen, there is a merger coming up, eventually that will happen, there’s WrestleMania in Philadelphia … but again, let’s figure out what that is, because the fans deserve something just incredible, unprecedented, and not only that, but also wanna deliver to the locker room and the boys and the girls back there, working their asses off. What can we do to put them in a position where they’re part of something that is a new change, an era, in this world of pro wrestling.”