The American Nightmare Cody Rhodes won the Royal Rumble to solidify his place at WrestleMania 40. However, his mania plans took a big hit when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson chose to gatecrash. Moreover, he was asked to just surrender his long-awaited championship match against Roman Reigns.

While this super heel turn by Dwayne Johnson evoked a massive outrage, this turn of events wasn’t initially in the cards. Although The Rock did abruptly assume charge of the storylines of WWE, Cody Rhodes wasn’t supposed to be just sent away. The American Nightmare was almost staged for the same fate as CM Punk after the Royal Rumble.

When a change of plans was thrown towards Cody Rhodes

The final bout of the Royal Rumble was always supposed to boil down to CM Punk and Cody Rhodes. Despite this, WWE had managed to maintain a lot of intrigue about the ultimate victor. But, the fighters knew that the Rumble had the name The American Nightmare on it. What nobody else knew about was the sudden entry of Dwayne Johnson. Moreover, Rhodes himself was told about it on the night of the Rumble. 

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According to WON’s Dave Meltzer, “[Cody Rhodes] was told the day of the Rumble that Rock was facing Reigns even though he was winning the Rumble. He was also told that they would be going to Reigns against him later so all the post-match stuff building that match wasn’t there to swerve people as much a build a later match.” Meltzer later followed with another detail that revealed the true intentions of Dwayne Johnson.

Dave Meltzer noted, “But the fact it was not going to be Reigns vs. Rhodes was keep secret from almost everyone (obviously a few knew) because Rock wanted the angle the next Friday a surprise. Even fewer knew the injury angle planned for Rhodes because even people who knew this complete story were not aware of the original idea of how to get Rhodes out of the match and Rock in.” But, this plan wasn’t followed through because of an unexpected development. 

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In fact, even The Rock didn’t know which ingredient luck would throw in his cooking.

When the scripted injury got sidelined by a real one

According to the master plan of The Rock, Cody Rhodes was supposed to relinquish his WrestleMania bout due to an injury. However, CM Punk ended up suffering an actual injury after his Royal Rumble match. This forced Dwayne Johnson to throw everything aside since the WWE Universe would’ve definitely buried WWE for injuring two biggest names at once.

But, Dwayne Johnson was quick to think of a new solution and countered the unintentional ingredient in his broth. Thus, the aftermath of the Royal Rumble saw Cody Rhodes giving up his title match against Roman Reigns which sent everyone’s alarms ringing. 

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However, this wasn’t counted as a scripting failure. Moreover, the new TKO Board Member status of Dwayne Johnson acted as the catalyst for the biggest super heel turn in pro wrestling history, Not only did Cody Rhodes receive a lot of cheers, but The Rock is still collecting truckloads of boos every single day. What are your thoughts about it? Let them flow in the comments.