Roman Reigns vs Cody Rhodes still planned for WWE WrestleMania 42; plans for title change & more - Report

The OTC has been absent from WWE programming since November.

‘The OTC’ Roman Reigns has been absent from WWE programming since the men’s WarGames at Survivor Series. Since his last appearance, a rumored showdown with Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania 42 was heavily speculated among fans.

However, a report from Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio suggested a change in WWE’s WrestleMania 42 plans after the decision to have Drew McIntyre capture the Undisputed WWE Championship from Cody Rhodes on the January 9 episode of SmackDown.

The report suggested that a third installment of Reigns vs Cody is now unlikely. However, a new report from Ibou of Self-Made has indicated that the match is still on the cards, but with a slight change in plans.

Roman Reigns will capture the Undisputed title ahead of WrestleMania 42

During the recent edition of the Self Made Sessions, Ibou claims that WWE’s creative direction plans for Roman Reigns to reclaim the Undisputed WWE Championship from Drew McIntyre on the road to WrestleMania, setting the stage for a third WrestleMania showdown between Reigns and Cody.

“The original direction was literally simply Cody is going to hold this deal until Mania and then Roman was going to go to Mania and beat him. That’s what they were gonna do… Triple H wanted to get some surprises in there and he wanted maybe to throw some monkey wrenches into the road.

He wants Cody to win, and so one of the things he devised – Drew McIntyre was the guy who pitched this and Drew was smart because now what he realised is I’m pitching things that can benefit me but I know it’ll go through because it’ll benefit the overall promotion and what they’re trying to do with their big thing…“

The report also revealed that WWE will likely focus on Cody‘s character shift, teasing a heel turn, and the angle of who attacked Jacob Fatu.

“The plan as of last week was Drew McIntyre was gonna be the middle man in this Cody-Roman story. The idea was gonna be Drew McIntyre was gonna hold the championship. It was going to lead to Cody Rhodes shifting his character ever so slightly.

They were going to play around with the idea that did he attack Jacob Fatu? Did he not? Is Cody turning heel? Is he not? They’re gonna play around with this without actually doing it. Jacob Fatu is going to be a tweener on the show. If you’re noticing, you’re not hearing a lot of Roman Reigns. It’s because he wasn’t going to be on TV for a lot of this sh*t. He’s a part-timer.

The bottom line is what I believe they were going to do is play around with all these elements, all these moving parts. Roman Reigns was most likely going to challenge Drew McIntyre and beat Drew McIntyre at some point in this process, and then he was going to face a challenging Cody Rhodes at WrestleMania. So we’ll see how that goes…but that’s what Paul Levesque was trying to pull off here.”

The 42nd edition of WrestleMania is set to emanate live from Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada. The show will take place over two nights, April 18 (Saturday) and April 19 (Sunday), 2026.

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