Cody Rhodes No Longer Planned To 'Finish The Story' At WWE WrestleMania 40

Cody Rhodes will need to keep his typewriter in good condition as he reportedly won't be finishing the story at WrestleMania 40.

The long-term plan for WrestleMania 40 was for a rematch between Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes over the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. Those plans looked to be in jeopardy in recent weeks, though, following The Rock's return and any plans for Rhodes to headline WrestleMania 40 are reportedly now off.

According to Sports Illustrated, "multiple sources close to WWE Head of Creative Paul 'Triple H' Levesque have indicated that Rhodes will not headline this year's event, nor will he 'finish his story' at WrestleMania."

What exactly Rhodes will do at WrestleMania instead is unclear but Sports Illustrated speculated he could face CM Punk following their heated promo exchange on this week's Raw. Punk is reportedly scheduled to challenge Seth Rollins for the World Heavyweight Championship at the Showcase of the Immortals but SI speculates Gunther could challenge Rollins instead following a Royal Rumble win on January 27.

Cody Rhodes has spoken about "finishing the story" since his WWE return at WrestleMania 38, with that story being him winning the one title his father, Dusty Rhodes, could not in the WWE Championship.

Rhodes looked set to finish the story at WrestleMania 39, only for Roman Reigns to retain. The booking decision was criticised at the time but Triple H defended his choice to have Reigns retain, saying after Mania:

"It's not dragging things out, it's telling the story. Where do you want to go with the story and how do you want to get there? If you're watching a movie and you thought every scene in the movie was the last scene in the movie, the entire movie is 'I can't believe they just did that. It was the worst movie ever.' And then you go, 'Oh wait there's more.' Oh 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 instead of weighing that out in my brain. It's all you think about. If you're going to be good at this it consumes every moment of everything you do.

"It's a feel and you feel it. Sometimes your feeling is wrong, sometimes your feeling is right. But I do know that it always continues and the story doesn't end here. Some people will look at it and say, 'Well if you did this then it would have been better.' But you don't know that, do you? That's the thing, you're gonna know because if you did the other thing, it might not have worked out the way you want it to. People might not have reacted to it the way you wanted to. So it's always a feel and where you are at that moment, honestly, is the right place to be and that's where you have to be and bank on what's next. You continue to tell the story but if I didn't feel like we had a compelling story on the other side, it wouldn't be the decision."

How long the story will continue for Rhodes now remains to be seen.