WrestleMania XL (2024): Cody Rhodes Finishes the Story and WWE Finally Lets the Ending Be the Ending

Ripley and Lynch open the weekend under difficult conditions: Lynch had been ill, the outdoor temperature is cold and the audience is still settling into a massive stadium show. They respond with a physical championship match that becomes more confident as it progresses. Lynch attacks the arm, Ripley repeatedly turns submissions into power escapes and neither woman rushes toward finishing moves before the damage has been established.

The closing stretch is excellent. Lynch counters Riptide into the Manhandle Slam, Ripley survives the Dis-Arm-Her and then drives Lynch into the turnbuckle with one Riptide before landing another in the center. The champion wins decisively and leaves looking stronger than when she entered.

The ladder match embraces chaos but gives the chaos a useful structural twist: each set of tag titles can be retrieved separately, so the match can change champions halfway through without ending. That detail creates a natural midpoint when Austin Theory and Grayson Waller retrieve the SmackDown titles and immediately shifts the remaining teams toward the Raw belts.

R-Truth is the emotional center. His mistaken pinfall on Finn Bálor is exactly the sort of comedy that usually ruins a ladder match, but here it fits his character and makes the eventual climb feel even better. JD McDonagh crashing through tables and New Catch Republic's ladder spots provide the major violence.

Truth finally sends Damian Priest over the ropes with an Attitude Adjustment and climbs to win the Raw titles with The Miz. The match splits the championship structure, gives two teams major WrestleMania moments and lets Truth earn his first WrestleMania victory. It is chaotic wrestling with a surprisingly clean destination.

The tag match is brisk, colorful and overstuffed with faction history. Rey and Andrade provide the babyface movement, Dominik remains the heat magnet and Escobar gives the heel side enough credibility that the match is not reduced to waiting for Rey and his son to interact. The wrestling is consistently solid without becoming essential.

Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson appear in Eagles masks to neutralize Dominik, allowing Rey to hit the 619 and Andrade to finish the sequence around Escobar. The local cameo gets the reaction WWE wants and fits WrestleMania's larger-than-weekly-television rules. The match is more fun than consequential.

The tragedy of Jey versus Jimmy is that the story gives them almost everything a WrestleMania match could ask for except a satisfying match. Years of Bloodline history, betrayal, reconciliation and resentment are compressed into repeated superkicks without enough escalation between them. The offense feels less like two brothers finally settling something and more like a signature-move exercise.

Jimmy's false apology is the one moment where the emotional history becomes specific. Jey accepts the handshake, Jimmy superkicks him and briefly creates the possibility that sympathy will cost Jey the match. Then Jey recovers, hits the Spear and Uso Splash and wins.

The correct result cannot repair the missed opportunity. This should have been one of the most personal matches on the weekend. Instead it becomes the obvious low point of Night 1.

The six-woman tag is designed around Jade Cargill's first WrestleMania appearance and never hides the assignment. Damage CTRL control long enough for Cargill's eventual entrance to feel important, while Bianca Belair and Naomi carry most of the competitive exchanges. The match is cleanly organized but almost entirely predictable.

Asuka accidentally mists Kairi Sane, Belair hits the K.O.D. and Cargill finishes Dakota Kai with Jaded. Cargill looks powerful, the babyface trio gets the expected celebration and nobody is asked to overcomplicate eight minutes. It succeeds as presentation more than as suspense.

Zayn versus Gunther works because the match never treats the champion's 666-day reign as something that needs a clever loophole to end. Gunther is stronger, more violent and increasingly convinced that the challenger is beneath him. Zayn survives because survival is the one skill nobody has ever been able to beat out of him.

Gunther's mistake is emotional rather than technical. He repeatedly powerbombs Zayn, mocks Zayn's wife and returns to the top rope for more punishment instead of simply ending the match. That arrogance creates the opening for Zayn's top-rope brainbuster, a move so visually dangerous that it instantly changes the entire atmosphere.

Two Helluva Kicks finish the champion and end the longest Intercontinental Championship reign in company history. The result is shocking without feeling random because Gunther loses only after deciding domination matters more than efficiency. It is classic underdog wrestling with almost no unnecessary machinery.

The Saturday main event is enormous, self-important and at least fifteen minutes longer than its cleanest version needs to be. The Rock's first substantial match in years and the stipulation stakes justify a deliberate opening, but the first half often feels like four major stars proving they can work a traditional tag before the audience gets the lawless match it actually came to see. The scale carries the slower stretches.

Once The Rock threatens the referee against enforcing countouts, the match finds its identity. Cody Rock Bottoms Rock through a table, Reigns spears Rollins through the barricade, the babyfaces hit simultaneous Pedigrees and the finish narrows toward Cody and Roman. The sequencing becomes much stronger as the Bloodline advantage grows.

Rock finally strikes Cody with the weight belt, Reigns lands the Spear and Rock hits the Rock Bottom and People's Elbow for the pin. The Bloodline earns Bloodline Rules for Sunday, and Rock pins the future champion cleanly enough to preserve a future singles issue. It is a very good epic whose purpose is clearer than its pacing.

McIntyre opens Sunday by hitting the Claymore almost immediately, announcing that this will not be another heroic twenty-five-minute Rollins defense. Rollins is injured, McIntyre is obsessed with finally getting his live-crowd world-title moment and CM Punk is sitting close enough to make every bad decision available. The match benefits from moving quickly.

Rollins survives multiple Claymores and produces enough offense to make the champion's damaged body part of the story rather than an excuse. McIntyre eventually lands another Claymore and wins cleanly, finally receiving the championship celebration he had been denied during the empty-arena pandemic period. For approximately two minutes, he appears capable of enjoying it.

Then he turns toward Punk. That decision does not change the quality of the match; it completes the character work around it. McIntyre wins the championship and immediately makes someone else more important than the championship.

Nine seconds cannot meaningfully function as a conventional wrestling match, so the value here is entirely in timing and consequence. McIntyre taunts CM Punk after winning the championship, Punk attacks him at ringside and Damian Priest recognizes that the champion has converted his own victory into vulnerability. The cash-in is character causality reduced to one bell.

Priest hits South of Heaven and wins the World Heavyweight Championship immediately. The wrestling content is almost nonexistent, but the moment is excellent: Priest becomes champion, McIntyre's reign ends in less than six minutes and the Punk-McIntyre rivalry gains the grievance that will fuel the rest of the year.

The Street Fight is built around local flavor and nostalgia more than the feud itself. Bubba Ray Dudley serves as special referee, Snoop Dogg joins commentary and the table spot arrives with the inevitability of a landmark on a guided tour. The wrestlers work energetically, but the rivalry never carries WrestleMania-level weight.

B-Fab neutralizes Scarlett, Bubba puts on the familiar Dudley glasses and Montez Ford splashes Karrion Kross through a table before Bobby Lashley gets the pin. The crowd enjoys the cues and the match ends before the gimmick becomes exhausting. It is functional WrestleMania entertainment rather than memorable wrestling.

Knight and Styles begin brawling before the bell and keep the match grounded in dislike rather than trying to build a technical showcase around two popular veterans. Styles attacks the knee, Knight fights with the blunt force that suits his character and the crowd reacts to Knight as someone arriving at his first WrestleMania with momentum rather than nostalgia. The match is straightforward in the best sense.

Styles misses the Phenomenal Forearm after Knight disrupts his launch, and BFT gives Knight the clean victory. The match never threatens the weekend's elite tier, but it delivers a significant first WrestleMania win without interference or protection. Sometimes the correct booking is simply letting the popular wrestler beat the established one.

The triple threat begins with Owens and Orton agreeing on the obvious strategy: beat up Logan Paul together and sort out the championship later. The temporary partnership gives the match personality before competitive self-interest inevitably breaks it apart. Paul is excellent at surviving between two established stars without disappearing from his own title defense.

The brass knuckles return, Orton counters Owens' Pop-Up Powerbomb into an RKO and IShowSpeed reveals himself inside the PRIME costume only to receive an RKO across the announce table. The celebrity involvement is ridiculous, brief and perfectly fitted to Paul's orbit. The finish stays focused on the champion.

Owens nearly catches Orton, Orton answers with another RKO and Paul removes Orton before landing the Frog Splash on Owens for the retention. The champion wins through opportunism without needing the match to collapse into interference. It is one of Paul's best WWE performances.

Bayley and IYO SKY enter with one of the weekend's most emotionally coherent stories and wisely trust the wrestling to express it. SKY attacks the knee and back, Bayley repeatedly has to solve the speed difference and neither woman relies on Damage CTRL interference to manufacture tension. The clean environment gives the betrayal story more dignity rather than less.

SKY's German suplexes, STF, crossface and Over the Moonsault create a sequence where Bayley appears increasingly unable to match the champion's precision. Bayley survives, reaches the elbow drop and finally lands the Rose Plant. The win feels less like revenge than reclamation.

Bayley becomes champion again after being expelled from the group she created, while SKY loses without looking outclassed. The match is technically excellent, emotionally legible and refreshingly free from the excessive machinery surrounding several other WrestleMania stories.

Rhodes and Reigns spend the first twenty minutes doing something essential: wrestling a serious rematch before the ghosts arrive. Reigns controls with the confidence of a champion whose faction has rescued him repeatedly, while Rhodes keeps returning to the same Cross Rhodes sequence that failed one year earlier. The audience knows interference is coming, but the match earns the anticipation instead of immediately surrendering to it.

Jimmy Uso attacks first and Jey Uso removes him. Solo Sikoa recreates the WrestleMania 39 interruption and combines the Samoan Spike with Reigns' Spear, only for Rhodes to kick out. That kickout is the pivot point of the entire story because the exact weapon that ended last year's challenge no longer ends this one.

John Cena arrives to neutralize Solo, The Rock removes Cena and The Undertaker appears to chokeslam Rock. Seth Rollins enters in Shield gear and is immediately punched out by Reigns, but his presence triggers the champion's oldest grievance. Reigns chooses to strike Rollins in the back with a chair, echoing Rollins' 2014 Shield betrayal, instead of finishing Rhodes.

That decision costs him everything. Rhodes avoids the Spear, hits three consecutive Cross Rhodes and pins Reigns to end the 1,316-day Universal Championship reign. The ring fills with family, friends and wrestlers from across the roster as Rhodes finally holds the championship his father never won.

As pure wrestling, there are matches with cleaner structure and less interruption. As a WrestleMania main event designed to resolve several years of WWE storytelling, very few have ever landed harder. The excess is not a flaw the match accidentally contains; Bloodline Rules makes the excess the point.