WWE WrestleMania 40 Documentary Is A "Sanitised" Version Of Events

After months of waiting, WWE finally released their WrestleMania 40: Behind The Curtain documentary over the past week, airing on YouTube. The documentary detailed the turbulent journey to the WrestleMania main event, noting that The Rock’s return was indeed supposed to set up a match with Roman Reigns, only for The Rock to make the decision to change plans and listen to the fans who wanted to see Cody Rhodes instead. 

The narrative painted in the documentary was one of collaboration, understanding, and something very smooth sailing. According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the story told here isn’t all accurate. 

Meltzer describes the version of events as “sanitised”. The first example of this was The Rock’s “Head Of The Table” line to test the waters of interest in a match between himself and Reigns, when in actual fact talks had been in motion for a month prior, if not earlier, and a match was on the table already. The alternate plans of Rhodes challenging Rollins were ignored, as was Rhodes “going into business for himself” by pointing at Reigns at the Royal Rumble. 

The Rock would go on to reveal it was he who made the call to put a halt on plans due to the ugly fan reaction. As noted by Meltzer, the political infighting was not covered in the documentary, which was described as “significant”, and the injury angle planned for Rhodes to write him off was not mentioned. Not only that, but the plans of a Rock victory at WrestleMania, only to relinquish the title, were ignored too, with the narrative being solely that The Rock listened to the fans and changed course.