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Nick Khan Claims That WWE’s WrestleMania 40 Plans ‘Never Changed’
Image Credit: WWE
Nick Khan says that despite the common perception to the contrary, WWE never changed their creative plans for WrestleMania 40. The 2024 WrestleMania appeared to undergo a pivot in the main event, as Cody Rhodes won the Royal Rumble and then gave his match with Roman Reigns to The Rock, seemingly out of nowhere. The fan pushback was intense, and WWE seemed to pivot when it Rhodes reclaimed his rightfully earned match while Rock and Reigns teamed against Rhodes and Seth Rollins on night one. Rhodes defeated Reigns to win the Undisputed WWE Championship on night two, thus “finishing the story.”
While the accepted narrative — even seen in WWE’s WrestleMania 40 Behind the Curtain documentary — said that WWE changed their plans, Khan said otherwise in a talk with Sports Business Journal. The Q&A, which was recorded in April and released on Tuesday, saw Khan asked about the pivot. He said that things were always intended to play out the way it did. You can see highlights below:
On the WrestleMania 40 Plan:
“By the way, the plan was always how it ended up in Philly two years ago. Sometimes — it’s a pre-determined outcome in wrestling. You want to throw the fans off, you want to let things bake. And then boom, it ends up the way that we wanted it to end up. It never changed. That was just online rumors and gossip that we were changing — it never changed.
“We convinced Dwayne Johnson to come back. He’s on our board of directors. It was a tag team match. He’s about the same age I am, so two years ago let’s say he was 50. You know, he was obviously in phenomenal shape. He did everything that we asked of him and then some. But that was always the result we were looking for.”
On If There’s Ever a Pivot Based On Online Criticism:
“We will never respond to social media criticism. Again if ratings are down, if revenue is down, if relevancy is down, it’s up to us.”
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Sports Business Journal with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.
