After watching the main event of WrestleMania 39 play out exactly as he intended, and listing to two of his champions, Bianca Belair and Roman Reigns, discuss their accomplishments in their respective post-match press conferences – curiously enough sponsored by the movie The Pope's Exorcist – Paul “Triple H” Levesque took it upon himself to address the WWE Universe for the second time in as many nights. Prepared to take hard questions, even though he sidelined one about the company being sold to Endeavor, Levesque first ran through the card and gave flowers to his Superstars, including one particularly interesting tidbit about Cody Rhodes and his plan to defeat Roman Reigns in Day 2 of WrestleMania‘s main event.
“Maybe for a lot of people, a shocking outcome, right? Levesque asked. “What I will say about that is, it's always interesting to me when people say, ‘how can that happen?' or ‘how can they do that' in that moment? And it's almost perfectly spelled out in this story. ‘I need to finish the story.' In the WWE, the story never finishes. Tomorrow night on Raw, at a sold-out Crypto.com Arena, the story continues. The story takes another chapter. We just got to the end of the chapter. The story continues and that's where this gets interesting to me. So that is what is the most amazing thing about our business, the story never ends.
“For Cody, so proud of him as a performer. The hardest thing in the world is to walk away from your comfort zone. No matter how difficult that environment that you're in is or anything, to go with what you're familiar with and walk away to an unknown environment is one of the most difficult things you'll ever do in your life. He did that and gambled on himself in the biggest way possible, and succeeded at it. But that wasn't his goal, and he knew when the time was right, all the things he was doing, all the gambling, all the moments he was creating was to get back to what he really wanted, which was to be here and be the WWE Champion and fulfill what he feels is his legacy and his career and birthright to some degree, to do what his dad didn't, you know, all those things. To see that journey and see him go through all those things is incredibly strong and an incredibly tough journey, and an incredibly strong person to do that. To do that in this business is really difficult, and he's done it and tonight, if anything, he proved and earned his place at the top of this business.”
Did Levesque really decide to give Reigns the rub because Rhodes' plan directly flew in the face of how WWE traditionally tells stories? Or is there a bigger payoff coming after this short-term setback? Either way, it would appear the RAW after WrestleMania is going to be even more must-watch than some may have initially assumed, as it sure sounds like a new chapter is about to open in the “Book of WWE.”
WWE Chief Content Officer @TripleH reflects on the journey of @CodyRhodes to the main event of #WrestleMania. pic.twitter.com/cNZFMccrmj
— WWE (@WWE) April 3, 2023
Triple H still confident in Roman Reigns' story after WrestleMania 39.
Elsewhere in his post-match press conference, Triple H was asked about the decision to pass up making a “John Cena-style babyface” at WrestleMania in favor of dragging out Reigns' story even further, and fortunately, he was willing to get into why he made the booking call, even if he took some offense with the term “drag out.”
“To drag things out sounds negative,” Levesque noted. “It's not dragging things out. It's telling a story. Where do you want to go with the story, and how do you want to get there? In the moment, you think, ‘Oh my God, I can't believe it.' If you're watching a movie and you thought every scene in the movie was the last scene in the movie, ‘I can't believe they did that, worst movie ever.' But wait, there's more. How much do we weigh that out? Every single moment of every single day.
“Some days when I'm trying to sleep, and I can't sleep, it's because I'm weighing that out in my brain, and I wish that I could sleep. It's all you think about, and it consumes your every moment of everything you do. You feel it. Sometimes your feeling is wrong, and sometimes your feeling is right. I do know that it always continues, and the story doesn't end here. Some people will look at it and say, ‘if you did this, it would have been better.' You don't know that, do you? You're never going to know because if you did the other thing, it might not have worked out the way you wanted it to. People might not have reacted the way you wanted to. It's always feel and where you are at that moment; honestly, it's the right place to be, and that's where you have to be and bank on what's next. If you continue to tell the story, and if I didn't feel like we had a compelling story on the other side, it wouldn't be the decision.”
Will fans forever wonder how the WWE Universe would have changed if Rhodes came up big in the main event of Mania? Yes. Will some never get over the decision to prioritize Roman's 1,000-day reign over giving “Hollywood” Cody Rhodes his WrestleMania moment? You bet, but hey, that doesn't mean Levesque doesn't have something in mind for The Bloodline moving forward,; who knows, maybe this final chapter of their story will be pretty darn cinematic too?
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