-- Brian Gewirtz, the former WWE head writer and current SVP of Seven Bucks, the production company founded by The Rock, appeared on Busted Open with hosts Tommy Dreamer and Dave LaGreca. Gewirtz covered a host of topics related to the Rock's return to WWE including floating the idea of a WrestleMania 39 match against Roman Reigns as well as detailing the thought process on how this year's WrestleMania main event evolved.
"January 1st - the promo with Jinder in San Diego, because at that point, it was looking very much like a possibility that Rock and Roman was gonna happen and we had a meeting in Rock’s...we rented a hotel room for the day in San Diego. It was me, Rock, Triple H and Nick and we talked about it all - Nick Khan - we talked about it all...and Triple H was very, as you would imagine, aware and astute of the current Cody storyline and brought that up and we talked about that for a while and at the end of the that meeting, this is what’s also funny that people don’t know is that..everyone enjoyed the, you know, for what it was, the promo with Jinder. But what everyone was talking about at the end of it was, ‘Should The Rock sit at the bar? Should he sit at the booth? Or should he sit at the head of the table?’ And that came about...super late into our meeting in San Diego at the hotel because as we were talking about Cody, it was said, ‘Well you know what? I hear you. Maybe we should do a little test polling of the audience and not just the audience in San Diego but the audience all over the world. What if I kind of teased it without saying it directly?’ We brainstormed on how to do that, he did it and as you saw, the place went nuts and online went nuts and maybe nuts is different degrees of nuts in terms of if you’re a diehard Cody fan and you might be, 'hey, wait a second... what’s he talking about here?' But for the most part, it was overwhelmingly positive when he teased head of the table, and at that point, we were like, okay, that gives us our answer. We’re locked in. He did the TKO announcement, he went to WWE HQ. I have, what ended up being...96 pages of merch and t-shirt and title belt design ideas from creative services and it was pretty much locked in at that point which begs the question which I know you’re gonna ask which everyone would ask and naturally ask which is...'okay, if all of that is the plan at this point in mid-January or whatever it is, why, on for the love of all things holy, do you have Cody Rhodes win the Royal Rumble?' That would be your question, right?"
-- On Cody Rhodes winning the Royal Rumble despite WWE locking in plans for Rock vs. Roman Reigns. He was asked if the plan was for that match and for Cody to challenge Seth Rollins for the World Title instead?
"Well, let me backtrack for a second and just say there’s... the idea of Cody winning the Rumble, I thought was problematic. In full transparency, I said even in San Diego in that meeting, I thought the cleanest thing to do if we’re booking Rock and Roman is to have Punk win the Rumble and challenge Rollins, just because there’s a difference storyline-wise in my opinion of Cody wanting to finish the story and having earned the right to finish the story by winning the Royal Rumble. Once you win the Royal Rumble, that dynamic changes from...I want to donate my hamstring to O.G. Anunoby so we could beat the Pacers in the playoffs. That’s not gonna happen. But Cody winning the Rumble changes the dynamic completely because it goes from something that...yeah, we all want things but now he’s got it and why would he do anything other than focus on Roman? And that’s what he naturally did when he pointed to him...why wouldn’t he? That’s exactly what that character would do… I'll just say...I do ultimately want to write a second book...I think...on this whole thing… so I don’t wanna say everything, but I will say, and I could say this with 100 percent certainty that the original plan is something that you, Dave (host) and many, many more people would have hated more than anything in life itself. I can’t overstate that or understate that, I can’t state that anymore clearer. But, Punk gets hurt...and the dominos start falling and things start shifting and then we get to a point now where the WrestleMania press conference is coming up. We need to promote something - a main event of some sort - and we’re in this space and now we get to the infamous Birmingham, Alabama promo."
-- On how plans were once again changed and The Rock turned heel:
"And then the next thing that happened after that basically changed the course of WWE history in a way. I got a voice message from Rock that weekend. SmackDown was on Friday. I think he gave it to me late, like four o’clock in the morning his time. He was in Hawaii on Saturday. I got it Sunday morning. He left me a voice message saying, ‘Okay, hear this one out. What if I turned heel? I’m just saying, what if I turned heel? What if we completely flip this thing on its ear and we go in an entirely different direction?’ And granted this is before the arena started I know that one house show started getting online traction and everything. I think he read the tea leaves, but I also think, and we always have talked about it. I said this before when we were working on promos together being like, ‘Oh man, if you’re a heel, you could say blank.’"
“He’s always kind of wanted to try to do it, but that’s what he proposed. He then proposed the tag match as the main event of WrestleMania because he liked the elements; he liked teaming with Roman, that image of badassery. He liked the throwback to WrestleMania I and the big tag match that main evented the show. I said, ‘I love the tag match too. But that can’t be the main event. That could be night one main event. I don’t think there’s a world that exists anymore that can’t end with Cody beating Roman for the title on night two.’"
“So he said, ‘Great, figure it out. Figure out a way to get the tag match to the singles match.’ We had an idea by the time we got to the press conference. It was different stipulations than it ended up being. I don’t think anyone really loved them. Without getting into specifics, it was more of if this team wins, this will be the match or if this team wins, this will be the match. Which is problematic because it required Cody winning twice, and you need that emotional release. He has to lose the first night because you need that emotional release of everything. Even if Rollins won the tag match, it’s still the same thing. You have to have Cody win when he wins with everything on the line for night two."
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