The road to WrestleMania 41 was full of surprises and John Cena’s heel turn at Elimination Chamber was arguably the most shocking moment of the year so far. WWE changed
During episode 4 of WWE’s new series WWE Unreal on Netflix, Brian Gewirtz revealed that at one point he and The Rock pitched the idea of Cody rejecting The Rock’s offer to become his champion with the plan being that The Final Boss would book a title match on the spot which would see Kevin Owens challenge Cody for the belt and win.
“So, myself and The Rock, we got together, and we pitched something that was twofold. I had the idea of Cody needing to be The Rock’s champion. We had that as the hook. We proposed at Elimination Chamber, Cody turning down The Final Boss. And that was going to lead to The Final Boss making an impromptu title match right then and there that resulted in Kevin Owens, who had been in a storyline with Cody at that time, leaving with the championship,” Gewirtz said.
Gewitrz continued to talked about the mindset regarding a potential KO title run when he added, “Kevin Owens winning the title wasn’t the end goal. The takeaway was whatever it is we do needs to be seismic. That’s the big question. What is Cody gonna say? What is he gonna do? How are you going to pay this off at Chamber?”
Ed Koskey went on to explain that the one issue WWE creative had was changing the title so close to WrestleMania. However, he added that The Rock’s involvement set the tone for how impactful the moment could be, so creative tried to figure out what they could do. Discussions about John Cena’s heel turn started shortly after between Koskey, Triple H, and Bruce Prichard, with Prichard pitching the idea.