While seemingly every fan in the WWE Universe has weighed in on the decision to have Roman Reigns retain his title versus Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 39, with some, like O'Shea Jackson Jr., appreciating the decision to keep WWE's Ace on top while others, like the crying children videos that have littered social media, have been less receptive to the decision to drop another contender, especially considering everything that was invested into his presentation.
But what does someone with more “hands-on” experience in the industry think about the decision, maybe someone who has actually been in a WWE writer's room before?
Fortunately, fans were actually afforded such an opinion by none other than Freddie Prinze Jr., famous actor from the turn of the century who also served as a writer for WWE from 2008–2009 and again from 2010–2012. Discussing WrestleMania 39 as a whole on his Wrestling with Freddie podcast, Prinze noted that while he thought the show as a whole was a success, the finish was as far from a Hollywood ending.
“It was a good weekend for the WWE,” Prinze said via Wrestling Inc. “It just was a really bad weekend for Cody Rhodes, and for everybody that invested their time and energy in watching his story, which was billed as a Hollywood story, to come to a finale in Hollywood and supposedly have a Hollywood ending. And it was the worst possible ending a movie could have.” Prinze went on to say that he was disappointed with Rhodes making numerous promises on camera, and then going on to be unable to fulfill any of them.
“I've heard people [say], ‘Well, maybe they'll do it at [Madison Square Garden], where his dad won, in a couple of months. And it's like, you're going to force it, and force-feed the championship? That's what fans hate, is when [it's] like, ‘We'll give him the title on this date, because of this.' No. Give him the title when the story dictates the title should be given.”
Is Prinze correct? Did WWE bungle the finish to the most important match they've promoted in years? Or could there be a future plan that makes more sense, like the one Prize inferred to, giving the strap to Rhodes at MSG or at Payback, where Reigns won the Universal Title in the first place all the way back in 2020 during the Thunderdome era? Only time will tell, but even if the company gets it right in the end, winning the belt at WrestleMania 39 really felt like the moment to make a change, and it's hard to imagine history will ever suggest otherwise.
Paul Heyman believes Cody Rhodes is a bigger star after WrestleMania 39.
One person who does believe WrestleMania 39 had the correct ending, albeit, because he came out on the right side of things, was Paul Heyman. Discussing the match's finish with Ariel Helwani for BT Sport after WrestleMania 39, Heyman was not only proud of his guy for pulling out the W but thought that the match, and the build-up to it, made “The American Nightmare” into a bigger star too.
“The response tonight to Cody Rhodes, which was louder than the response last week to Cody Rhodes, which was a response more passionate tonight for Cody Rhodes, which was a response of an audience that believes in Cody Rhodes this week more than they did last week when they hung their hopes into dreams on him and he didn't disappoint them, we disappointed them,” Heyman noted via F4W. “We took that away from Cody Rhodes. Roman Reigns took that away from Cody Rhodes and the audience. They blame Roman Reigns for it, and they appreciate how close Cody came, and they know, now, they know the next time Cody Rhodes steps in the ring with Roman Reigns, this will be the one. That's the business, that's the business at its very best. That's promotion at its very best, that's storytelling at its very best.
“That's what you want, a challenger to come out a bigger star than he would have been if he had won the championship because then where do you go from there? What's the story to tell? Now you know the story, it's Cody's redemption. He's coming back from what was just taken from him, from the defeat he suffered that he didn't deserve to have inflicted upon him.”
Was Rhodes a bigger star at the end of WrestleMania 39 than when it began? Sitting in the ring for 10 minutes while the crowd watched on in disbelief? Debateable. Was Rhodes a bigger star at the end of RAW one night later, when Brock Lesnar committed 10 minutes to beating the absolute crap out of him? That's debatable too, but the prevailing opinion appears to be a resounding no. If Rhodes is going to come out of this feud an even bigger star than entering Mania, it's going to take quite a bit of legwork from creative.
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