The Rock is back in Hollywood. Following the Monday Night Raw after WrestleMania, The People’s Champ headed off to a movie set, leaving his WWE future in doubt. Most assume he’ll return at some point to do a program with his cousin Roman Reigns. In fact, WWE seems to be moving around some puzzle pieces already in order to eventually make that happen, but will he do a program with new WWE Champion Cody Rhodes too?
Well, that depends. The American Nightmare is in the midst of a European tour and stopped by Good Morning Britain. One of the hosts asked if we’ll see Cody Rhodes wrestle The Rock down the road, and he gave a really thoughtful answer. Basically, it depends. The better himself and the New Era stars are able to do without The Rock, the more likely they are to lure him back and entice him to work with them. Here’s what he said…
I want to say yes. I want to say yes. I think it will really come down to… can I be a good champion? Or a great champion? Roman Reigns was a great champion. And will that be enough to entice The Rock? Because that’s what’s happened here. The Rock will tell you he made wrestling cool again. The Rock made wrestling cool maybe in the first place, but this run is a whole new generation, a whole new locker room. Seth Rollins, Becky Lynch, myself, Rhea Ripley, all these people. I think the more we keep this, the better we do, the more chances it lures Rock back into the fray.
Now, to be clear, WWE seemed to set up a confrontation between The Rock and Cody Rhodes before he left a few weeks ago. The movie star’s final segment was with the new WWE Champion and teased a slobberknocker down the road. It even involved a whole thing where The Rock held Cody’s belt and heavily implied he was coming for it, but as we’ve seen already this year, plans in wrestling are always written in pencil. The Rock’s original return plan was to face Roman Reigns at WrestleMania 40, but after the crowd turned on that and started booing, WWE pivoted and gave us The Rock and Roman Reigns tagging together against Cody Rhodes and Seth Rollins.
So, the real question is… can Cody Rhodes continue the momentum that has been created over the last several months and stay on top for as long as The Rock is gone? WWE has been breaking records left and right. WrestleMania 40 was the most watched PPV in WWE history, and they’ve been selling out the majority of televised events. There’s also a passion and excitement we haven’t seen in what feels like decades. Some of that was due to The Rock’s return, but a lot of it was due to several hot storylines from the new generation of stars including Rhodes.
The Rock is going to be in the main event of whatever he does. The Rock isn’t returning to wrestle some match the fans are casually into halfway through the card. So, whenever he does return, he’s no doubt going to assess, alongside Triple H, Bruce Prichard and the other writers, who he should be working with. The answer long-term is most certainly going to be Roman Reigns, as they tell the story of family supremacy. But how much Cody Rhodes figures into that story is going to correlate with how he’s doing.
If the fans are behind him and he’s still the hottest babyface since John Cena, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the two main event SummerSlam in August together — or even WrestleMania 41. If the crowd is starting to turn apathetic and isn’t as interested in seeing Cody on top, now that he’s won the belt he vowed to win for his late father Dusty Rhodes, then there’s a good chance he may get mostly left out of The Rock’s plans whenever he comes back.
It’s an exciting time to be a wrestling fan, and I can’t wait to see how all of this plays out.
