WWE's massive Drew McIntyre twist has blown apart the Road to WrestleMania 42

13 hours ago 1

Hats off to WWE. After a year of obsessively attempting to come up with contrived “Bet you didn’t see that coming?!” twists, they actually managed to wrong-foot just about everyone — and in a way that actually counts for something. With Drew McIntyre beating Cody Rhodes for the WWE Undisputed Championship on Friday night's "SmackDown," the latter’s title reign suddenly meets its end at 159 days.

As for how big a shock it was, you can choose your metric. But how about the fact that neither of the two belts that make up the Undisputed Championship have changed hands on a WWE weekly show like “SmackDown"” since 2021? In fact, ever since Triple H took over, the big prize has only been won at WrestleManias or SummerSlams, with even standard PLEs being considered unworthy of title changes.

The idea that golden boy Cody Rhodes could lose his gold on a random episode of “SmackDown” would've been fanciful just a week ago. But for it to happen on one of the European shows that are broadcast six hours behind schedule in the U.S.? That was pretty unthinkable. Particularly in an era when WWE is so obsessed with social media and knew the result would be — and very much was — leaked immediately.

Even when the big twist came, I wasn’t sure it was real. I spent the next two minutes genuinely expecting we’d see "SmackDown" general manager Nick Aldis come charging down the ramp to announce there'd be an extra bout added to the match, or a rematch declared next week. I know it sounds preposterous, but so did the idea of McIntyre winning the Undisputed Championship by tumbling out of the cage.

Should Friday's upset have come as such a surprise? It isn’t as if WWE hasn’t invested in building up McIntyre as a legitimate threat to Rhodes. I wrote last year how welcome it was that WWE was finally treating one of its most charismatic heels as a suitably serious prospect. Nothing has changed since then, thankfully, as the company has continued to push McIntyre as a viable No. 1 contender into 2026.

We knew as well that a big deal was being made of the “Three Stages of Hell” stipulation. But there’s a big difference between having a suitably pugilistic match to finish off a feud — i.e., the Rhodes vs. Owens ladder match at last year's Royal Rumble — and one that upends the fundamental gravity of the WWE hierarchy.

So what does McIntyre's win mean for the future? For a start, it wipes the slate clean for WrestleMania 42. Going into Friday night, most of us were working from the assumption that WWE’s QB1 was cruising into Las Vegas this April as champion, with the only question being who he'd face when he gets there. I don’t remember anyone suggesting it might be Drew McIntyre.

Barring another twist, then, we’re on the road to having a heel champion come 'Mania. Particularly if WWE takes the logical step of having McIntyre crush Sami Zayn on Jan. 31 at the Royal Rumble. The fact that this year’s Rumble takes place in Saudi Arabia — where Zayn’s popularity is verging on Montreal proportions — gives Triple H and company the perfect opportunity to grant McIntyre his Gunther moment.

As for what comes after that, speculation appears to already be swirling that we may finally get McIntyre vs. Roman Reigns 2, potentially at WrestleMania. Except this time, of course, the roles would be reversed: McIntyre would not just be the bad guy, but the reigning champion too. That has to make for a solid main event, even if it lacks the casual name recognition of last year's John Cena coronation.

Whatever happens at 'Mania, Friday's decision also gives McIntyre some well-deserved time in the spotlight. Take fault with some of WWE's booking decisions all you like, but you can’t deny the man himself has consistently answered the call over the past four years. Not just his cerebral feud against CM Punk from 2024, but also turning a hastily assembled tag match with Jelly Roll into one of the best bouts from last year’s SummerSlam.

As for the wider WWE landscape, the big lesson coming out of the weekend is all those tried-and-tested assumptions about Triple H’s booking may not be as firm as we once thought. I’ve already mentioned the much-cited rule that big titles only change hands at stadium shows; if that can finally be tossed out of the window at a moment's notice, who knows what the next shibboleth on the chopping block will be?

This doesn’t fix everything. Twist or not, there’s no getting away from the fact that WWE's weekly shows, in particular, have felt stale for months now. What Friday's decision does demonstrate, though, is that the current regime isn’t afraid to shake things up from time to time, and that they’re not as wedded to the old rules as we previously thought.

In terms of WWE's upper card, this genuinely felt like a shake-up of gargantuan proportions. Just think: John Cena hasn’t even been gone a month, and already the bad guys are back on top. And the man who Cena ended up congratulating back at SummerSlam has been dethroned once more — this time without the involvement of Travis Scott.

Regardless of whatever else is served up on this European tour, the Road to WrestleMania 42 is suddenly looking just that little bit more intriguing than it was 24 hours ago.

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