More on Cody Rhodes & Paul Heyman Promo Segment at This Past Monday’s RAW

This past Monday’s RAW show in Orlando, Florida featured a promo segment between Cody Rhodes and Paul Heyman as part of the build for Rhodes’ upcoming match against Roman Reigns for the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship at this April’s WrestleMania 39 event.

Dave Meltzer reported in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter that his sources stated that WWE officials originally did no have any plans for Heyman to make an appearance on the show. Heyman reportedly was still going to be backstage at the show due him still having a hand in the creative plans for anything involving Brock Lesnar. Besides Lesnar, Heyman reportedly also still has a hand when it comes to working on the creative plans for Reigns and Ronda Rousey in the company.

Meltzer reported that those spoken to stated that WWE’s original plans for Rhodes on the show was completely different than what took place in the end with the changes being made late in the prior week. Rhodes and Heyman reportedly were the people who largely put together their promo segment for the direction they wanted to go for the show.

Meltzer also reported that one interesting aspect of Rhodes’ promo was him specifically mentioning that his upcoming match against Reigns was for both of Reigns’ championship belts and not just for “the belt”. Prior to this promo, WWE had been rumored to be considering plans to split up the Undisputed WWE Championship into two belts for WrestleMania 39.

Meltzer also reported that Rhodes specifically mentioning his support for Sami Zayn against Reigns was his and WWE’s way of trying to prevent crowds from revolting over Rhodes’ being the company’s handpick person for Reigns’s match at WrestleMania out of anger of Zayn being tossed aside as the person who should beat Reigns for the belts.

Fightful Select reported that their sources provided several additional details regarding Heyman and Rhodes’ promo segment on the show. It was reported that those spoken to stated that Heyman and Rhodes had wrote their own portions of the promo segment and that it “ended up coming together perfectly.” Those close to Heyman reportedly stated that Heyman had a surprised reaction over Rhodes’ inclusion of the ECW story involving his late father Dusty since it is not believed that he had been previously told how important Dusty’s bookings in ECW was for the Rhodes family.

It was also reported that the general reaction from those involved in putting together the segment were stated to be very happy over how the whole thing went down on the show. One high level WWE official reportedly stated “Cody Rhodes is a star, and Paul Heyman is a starmaker. They were in a difficult position, and made something that seemed like a manufactured booking decision become a personal, WrestleMania main event if it ends up going that direction.”