It’s another Bite commentary… one that stemmed from last Sunday’s DTM-Cast show. If you heard that show, then a lot of what’s being said here is going to be old hat… but then I came up with more words to explain why Brian Gewirtz is a fucking moron.
Before we dive deep into this thing, I think it’s important to provide some context, starting with “Who the fuck is Brian Gewirtz?”
Brian Gewirtz is the “Current SVP of Development at Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia’s “Seven Bucks Productions”, Brian Gewirtz was a former writer for Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment where he soon became the youngest and longest tenured Head Writer in the company’s history. He’s written on several television shows and has served as Executive Producer on NBC’s “The Titan Games”, the upcoming “Behind the Attraction” on Disney Plus” and on NBC’s “Young Rock” based on the life of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.”
Everyone got that? Good.
During a interview with the Masked Men Podcast, Gewirtz stated that the original intent behind the Rock/Cody/Roman segment was supposed to be much more uplifting and positive than what actually transpired on screen. The idea was that Cody was supposed to be more gung-ho about the idea of giving up his Wrestlemania spot that he had earned by virtue of winning the Royal Rumble (for the second year in a row – a feat that hadn’t happened in decades) and letting Rock slide in while Cody walks off into the sunset with a smile and maybe a bit of a dance on the way out. Like Cody was supposed to be happy about giving up on his finishing the story just so Dwayne could take a crack at it.
For the record, here’s the actual quote (credit to Post Wrestling for the transcribed words):
“I will say Cody is a human being who is genuine and real and he wears his heart and emotions on his sleeve and I will say, in Alabama, certainly, even if you tell me, dude, that will never work. That’s stupid to even propose it. But the idea was supposed to be, again — it’s like a Nixon-Kennedy debate a little bit where it’s like if you read the transcript, you’re like, oh, Nixon kicked his ass. If you watch the actual footage, you go, ah, it was a sweaty, terrible mess.
“Because Cody, it was supposed to be, in some form, like, ‘YEAH! FUCKIN’ A! GO GET ‘EM ROCK! YOU GONNA GET YOUR ASS KICKED ROMAN! LET’S DO THIS, YA’LL!’ And kind of this uplifting promo and instead, he looked like someone shot his dog in the face in the parking lot. Just look at his expression and by the way, someone else who even when the team wins, sometimes looks forlorn and upset and despondent.
“So yeah, that, I don’t think helped matters. It might not have changed, it might not have affected anything. But certainly on paper — and by the way, I don’t even blame Cody for that because he’s real, he’s one of the realest people I’ve ever met so yeah, it’s like, he said what he had to say in the promo. But you couldn’t mask what he was really feeling and I think the fans felt that a lot. I think the fans felt like he doesn’t mean a word of this. This is being forced for him to say. He’s despondent. He’s literally doing the Michael Cera-Arrested Development-Charlie Brown walk out of the arena, when he’s supposed to be on cloud nine so, I think that had a lot to do with it.”
By the way, this was the former lead writer of Monday Night RAW in the early 2000s… McSon-In-Law, Reign Of Terror, HLA, things like that… he was part of that. For those who missed out on that period, I envy you greatly because that was some of the absolute worst television I’ve witnessed in all my years of watching wrestling. Hell, even the worst of the 2019-2022 period doesn’t even compare to the dredges of 2003 WWE, of which this dumbass was responsible for.
I don’t know if you recall a show called Wrestlemania IX. Live from Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. Largely terrible show headlined with a terrible ending. The show that saw WWF Champion Bret Hart defending his title against Yokozuna, shenanigans resulting in Yoko winning the belt and it looked like we were going to have a Wrestlemania with the heel walking out as the champion. But then out comes Hulk Hogan, who gets challenged to a title match right then and there? And Bret Hart, even though he lost the title, even though he got screwed out of his championship, even though he should be getting another crack at Yokozuna somewhere down the line… he’s like, “YEAH, HULK! YOU GO GET ‘EM, HULK! FUCKIN’ EH! YOU GONNA GET YO ASS KICKED NOW, YOKOZUNA! YEAH!” And then Hulk won the belt, fucked off, and Bret Hart was made to look like the biggest geek in the world?
Sounds familiar? Because that’s the scenario they wanted to play out with Cody.
Cody had his shot at Roman last year, he was screwed out of the title picture, spent a year working his way back up, won the Rumble for the second year in a row, immediately – IMMEDIATELY – challenged Roman for the title and then a week later, he’s like “Nah, I ain’t challenging you at Wrestlemania. I’m gonna give me shot to Dwayne and he’s gonna beat your ass for the title.” And then Cody is supposed to be happy about this because… why?
By the way, I’m not even touching on how this whole scenario was supposed to play out had they pushed through with Rock Vs. Roman. So, Cody was going to give up his spot for Rock, presumably he would challenge Seth for his consolation prize championship, which would’ve made THAT belt look like a joke. He gave up his top spot for the LOSERS’ World title. And Rock vs Roman would happen at Mania, Rock would beat Roman for the title, and vacate it the next night on RAW. That was the idea for the People’s Champion belt. He was going to give up the WWE title, declare himself People’s Champ for life, complete with belt, ride off into the sunset, and everyone is supposed to happy about this… why?
So… they play the scene out and Cody comes out, indeed, looking despondent. Like he knows people are going to shit all over this segment, he knows it’s going to suck, and he does this promo in a way that it feels forced, he doesn’t believe a word of this… and that’s always been the thing with Cody Rhodes that made him endearing; his promos were spoken with conviction. He believed in what he was saying, he never sounded phony or fake. Even during the worst of the Codyverse stuff in AEW, there was never a point where he’d cut a promo that he wasn’t buying into. Every word he spoke, he believed in, even when everyone else didn’t. That’s something to be admired and a talent that very people have these days.
But I watch that promo… Cody’s saying the words, but there’s not an ounce of believability. He comes as phony and fake, he’s saying words that he doesn’t believe in, he has a look that tells you… “Yeah, he knows this is bullshit.” Because that would be tossing away almost two years of storytelling… two years of building this guy up to be the top star in your company… just so Dwayne could try and reclaim some of that glory after his venture in Tinseltown took a bit of a nose dive. Black Adam was not the roaring success Dwayne was hoping it’d be, nor was he going to be the face of any DC Universe movie franchise going forward. Young Rock was cancelled due to sagging rating. His reputation as a dick was fairly well known. So Rock making the big power move – buying a stake in TKO and getting himself a Mania main event – this was supposed to rehab his image with the big return to wrestling.
And people figured that shit out BEFORE the segment when Rock made that promo on Day 1 RAW and teased a challenge to Roman. And I was dreading the moment that they’d pivot towards that. Even during the Rumble, there was that worry, that concern of Rock entering the Rumble and winning it himself… and had that gone that way, hey, it still would’ve sucked, but at least it’d be honest about where they wanted to go. And you would’ve have had this backlash.
The way they wanted to do it… yeah, you want to talk about the Cody Crybabies and all that… honestly, Cody Crybabies seems like a generalization for anyone with a functioning fucking brain knowing that this whole thing was going to be the drizzling shits. And listen, if this had been Twitter noise, Net Noise, it’d be one thing… but when you have audiences booing any and all mention of the Rock at live shows, when the NXT audience is booing the guy’s daughter, who is a character on that show, and they’re booing her not because of anything she’s done, but because she’s Dwayne’s daughter… and by the way, some would argue that her being where she is on NXT is strictly due to nepotism – I wouldn’t know, I don’t watch NXT, I’ve seen clips of her on the show and that’s another story for another time, but… when she’s getting blowback for this stupid fucking storyline that she has nothing to do with… imagine how much blowback you would have gotten had Cody been gung-ho about this. It would have made him look WORSE… and people were already complaining about how he looked like the biggest geek in the world.
And look, I’m sure Dwayne felt the same way. I’m sure Dwayne figured he’d come back and they’d welcome him with open arms and they did initially… but when they realized what he was doing, they were like, “Nah, fuck this guy.” This was Dwayne carjacking Cody Rhodes on the Road To Wrestlemania… but this time, and to their credit, they pivoted again to the direction we went, which saw Cody not hand over the keys, all but confirmed his main event with Roman, Rock turned heel, became the Final Boss, Cody got to finish his story, everybody’s fucking happy, and now we have Rock vs. Cody to look forward to at Wrestlemania 41 and then maybe afterwards, we might have that Rock vs Roman match at 42… presumably to be held in Saudi Arabia if rumors turn out to be true, but… yeah, this fucking Gewertz. This moron. This half-brained nimrod. This fucking TWAT.
“If only he smiled a little more…”
Fuck off, Brian.
dtm666 