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If there's one person who didn't want to see Cody Rhodes “finish the story” at WrestleMania 40, it had to be long-time WWE multi-hyphenate Paul Heyman.
On the one hand, Heyman was operating as the “Wise Man” to Roman Reigns, who was rapidly marching towards an all-time record with the WWE Championship, but also because he could have had a Reigns-Rock main event, with the entire extended Anoa'i-Fatu family benefiting from that generational matchup in the WrestleMania 40 main event.
And yet, in an interview with SHAK Wrestling, Heyman noted that in the end, WWE made the right choice, as Paul “Triple H” Levesque kept his finger on the pulse and ended up making the right call.
“Have your finger on the pulse of the audience at all times. Some people don’t, and some people do. That story ended up exactly where that story should’ve ended up. That story ended up with Roman Reigns vs. Cody Rhodes in the main event of WrestleMania 40, and that was the rightful main event of WrestleMania 40 as the audience had a two year investment in that story,” Heyman said via Fightful.
“They lived it with us. When I say ‘us,’ I include Cody in that ‘us’ because was the protagonist in that story. We were the antagonists. They lived it not only by witnessing it and experiencing it, they lived it many times through the eyes of the protagonist and the struggles that he had to endure and survive and thrive through, all with his chin up and with a progressive ‘move forward’ attitude. The lesson to be learned is the same lesson that was learned back in the amphitheaters of ancient Greece.”
Interesting stuff, right? Well, wait, it gets even better, as Heyman had plenty more to say on the subject of staying on top of the culture.
Paul Heyman credits WWE for keeping an eye on the culture
Discussing the matter further, Heyman noted just how challenging it can be to give fans what they want weekly, let alone at the biggest show of the year, but at least last spring, WWE did a good job as they hit the main event fans wanted to see on the most important show of the year.
“Know what the audience wants, super-serve that desire, and make sure that you have navigation towards where the story needs to go or can go with many different avenues depending on where the culture may take us tomorrow,” Heyman explained.
“Tomorrow’s culture may be very different than today’s. Something can transpire tomorrow and all of culture can go with it. Fashion, music, taste, movies, sensitivities towards what’s on the screen, any sensitivity towards what’s on the screen. It doesn’t take much. It takes very little to pivot the entire culture, and you have to have a finger on where that can go because if you’re not right now thinking, ‘Where is the culture going to be in April?’ How do you start planning out your WrestleMania main events?”
Did WWE make the right decision to give the main event back to Rhodes, or did they severely misread the situation by taking it away, as that decision created the “We Want Cody” movement in the first place? While one could seriously argue the latter point and probably come away with the proverbial W, in the end, Heyman's point still stands: WWE saw an issue – of their own making or not – and decided to fix it ahead of their biggest show of the year. For a massive company with thousands of employees, that kind of flexibility deserves to be praised.
