The main event of Night 2 of WrestleMania 39 effectively came down to one question that Paul “Triple H” Levesque and the rest of WWE creative had to answer: creating a new Mega-Babyface Superstar in Cody Rhodes or keeping Roman Reigns' Universal Championship win streak alive as he inches closer and closer to 1,000 days with the title.
On paper, the question isn't as easy as some may have thought heading into the show; sure, making Rhodes into “the guy” would have been a cathartic, emotional experience for the 80,000 fans in attendance plus the millions of fans watching from home, but 1,000 days with a championship is an accomplishment that has only happened a few times in WWE history and may never happen again considering the unique circumstances that went into the past few years. Still, that won't stop fans, pundits, and former promoters alike from questioning if Levesque made the right call, with a man Rhodes knows very well, Jeff Jarrett, asserting on his My World podcast that WWE made the wrong call when it mattered most.
“This is something that Jerry Lawler, my dad, Jackie Fargo, ‘Handsome’ Jimmy Valiant, one time sat me down and kind of gave me this kind of mindset. There’s something about a gut feeling, and sometimes promoters go with their gut,” Jarrett said via Fightful. “My gut still told me it would have been the right move. I don’t think it would have hurt Roman, I don’t think it would have hurt The Bloodline. I don’t think, if we wait a year, I don’t think, because we waited a year, there’s gonna be that many more eyeballs, there’s gonna be that much exponentially grown business. All the, ‘He didn’t do it this year, and we’re gonna do it next year because of X, Y, and Z,’ that’s still TBD. I think my gut tells me they missed the opportunity. I may be wrong, but I may be right. We will see. It was a hell of a match, a hell of a finish, and it’s funny how, a lot of the audiences will say, ‘Oh, this run in there and that run in there, oh they would never do that in the world title match.’ This match had been built and it’s the WrestleMania main event of night two, and they had five people run in. You talk about the layer upon layer upon layer, the Screwjob of all Screwjobs.”
Whoa, the “Screwjob of all Screwjobs,” you say? Now sure, Reigns had, like, an ungodly amount of help in his championship win over Rhodes, with Solo Sikoa, The Usos, Paul Heyman, and Solo Sikoa, again, all playing into the finish of the match. Still, considering how, well, basically every recent Reigns match has finished over the past few years, is that really all that surprising? Frankly, having Reigns pin Rhodes cleanly would have been a much more crushing blow because it would have been the exception to his typical rule.
Jeff Jarrett wonders if WWE's sale impacted the finish of WrestleMania 39.
Elsewhere in his podcast, Jarrett was asked by his co-host, Conrad Thompson, if he thought WWE's impending sale may have impacted the finish for WrestleMania 39‘s Day 2 main event. A veteran of both sides of the business, Jarrett wasn't sure but complemented WWE for doing great business at “The Showcase of the Immortals.”
“The fact that I don’t know what I really don’t know, and that is the big CNBC news break that started happening about six hours before bell time,” Jarrett said. “Had that not been a real thing, so kind of unplug the sale, which at the end of the day, all the news comes out, and look, Dana White and UFC basically stayed as is, and Ari and Endeavor just kind of lifted the whole business, but Dana kept running it, and that’s the word coming out, that it’s Vince’s baby and his business, and he’s gonna keep running it. But at the end of the day, the words Endeavor are before UFC, and the words Endeavor will be in front of WWE. So there’s a new sheriff in town. I have no idea, and there’s obviously the talk and rumors that the finish, was it put in place a month or however long before, so I took all those variables in and look at it, and we just talked about $20 million on sponsorship, so super, super successful. So don’t fix what’s not broke. I completely lean into all of that, and there is so many sides to that argument. That’s the one side.”
Did Endeavor want to keep Reigns as champion when their new era began the following day? Or was that decision all Vince McMahon and/or Triple H, who view Reigns not only as “The Head of the Table,” but also as their Ace? Maybe one day, fans will know the full story one way or another.
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