Imagine this: What if Jey Uso hadn’t won the 2025 Royal Rumble, and instead CM Punk went head-to-head with Gunther at WrestleMania 41 for the World Heavyweight Championship? Or, what if John Cena hadn’t turned heel, and instead The Rock called upon somebody else to beat Cody Rhodes for his WWE Championship?
Those storylines, though vastly different from the ones that actually unfolded, were given real consideration in the WWE writers’ room, and it’s all on display in WWE: Unreal.
The five-part documentary takes its audience deep into the full process of a WWE production, from ideation to performances under bright lights in the squared circle. Viewers are flies on the backstage walls during Raw, Smackdown, and various premium live events, witnessing everything from superstars hashing out plans ahead of their matches to the highly active production area known as the “Gorilla Position,” where the show is monitored and instructions are cued by a production team under the watchful eye of WWE’s Chief Content Officer, Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
But equally fascinating, and perhaps most unprecedented, is the series’ in-depth look inside the WWE’s writers’ room, where we see the process that precedes every big decision. Some ideas are scrapped entirely, but more intriguingly, some take on an entirely different form.
In Episode 4 of WWE: Unreal, while discussing the many paths considered during storylines, Levesque compares the WWE to modern superhero franchises. “In a way, it’s like Marvel and the multiverse and all that stuff. There’s all these alternative universes where this happens or that happens. So you have to, like, kind of play them out in your mind as to where do they go to and what is the best.”
Let’s take a look at some of those wild alternate universes that the creative team considered visiting throughout this season of WWE: Unreal.
From the writers’ room at the WWE Headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut, Levesque asks the creative team: “So, who do you see winning the Rumble?”
Several people immediately chime in to say CM Punk.
However, they also give strong consideration to John Cena, who is in the midst of his final year of WWE in-ring performances. Levesque confirms that the tentative Wrestlemania 41 main event matches spawning from the Royal Rumble outcome are Cody Rhodes vs. John Cena and CM Punk vs. Gunther.
But then writer Ed Koskey offers a fresh thought. “If I could get the math to work, I’d love to put Jey [Uso] in one of those spots,” he says, drawing support from the WWE’s Vice President of Creative Writing and Booking, Michael Hayes.
Hayes explains, “I think in the case of Jey Uso, when somebody catches fire, they just catch fire. And sometimes you have to alternate all your plans. Who do we have on our roster that’s hot, that hopefully is maybe new and fresh, and all of a sudden, Jey Uso is checking all those boxes.”
In the end, the creative team went with Uso to win the 2025 Royal Rumble match and face Gunther at WrestleMania 41 rather than CM Punk, though John Cena vs. Cody Rhodes still took place.
When the creative team discusses who should win the 2025 Women’s Royal Rumble match, they consider some fascinating options, including Bianca Belair: As a former Royal Rumble winner, she would make history by winning the match twice.
But Jonathon Baeckstrom, WWE’s Vice President of Creative Writing, wonders if it’s worth going a different route. “Do you make this an underdog story? Is there somebody you’d wanna take a swing on?”
This leads to Koskey presenting a brilliant concept (which he modestly calls a “horrible option”) for a twist ending. “You get entrant 29 in there. They come in and there’s only two women. They end up doing a double elimination. So whoever’s number 30 automatically wins. Chelsea Green walks down, wins the Royal Rumble.”
While that would’ve been a stunning, one-of-a-kind conclusion to the match, the creative team in this timeline went with Charlotte Flair as the 2025 Women’s Royal Rumble winner.
One of the biggest “what if” scenarios comes during Episode 4’s segment about WWE’s extensive 2025 Elimination Chamber plans.
Hoping to make big waves, WWE contacted Brian Gewirtz, a former WWE writer and current executive at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s production company. After getting together with Johnson, Gerwitz says they pitched WWE the idea of The Rock inviting Cody Rhodes to serve as his champion. Rhodes would reject this offer at Elimination Chamber, leading to The Rock making “an impromptu title match right then and there.” Rhodes’ opponent? Kevin Owens, who would win and leave as the new WWE Champion.
Gewirtz says, “Kevin Owens winning the title wasn’t the end goal. The takeaway was whatever it is we do needs to be seismic.”
The story the writers eventually landed on was indeed seismic, but first let’s look at another wild option that was discussed …
While the idea for Kevin Owens winning the WWE Championship didn’t pan out, Koskey explains the importance of the concept. “Rock and his team made out the original offer as far as what we could possibly do at Elimination Chamber. The overall framework from Rock’s team worked. The one issue we had was changing the championship that close to WrestleMania. All that being said, the idea from Rock’s team did set the tone for how impactful this moment needed to be, so we were trying to figure out what could we do.”
Of the “what if” scenarios that were considered, one was to have fan favorite Cody Rhodes go bad. “I think I was the first one to say, ‘What if Cody accepts the offer and drops John Cena and sells out to The Rock?’ ” Koskey recalls. He adds, “It was actually [WWE executive] Bruce [Prichard] who said, ‘What if we turn John Cena [heel]?’ ”
That was ultimately what WWE creative decided to do, turning the ultimate babyface, John Cena, into a bad guy who attacked Cody Rhodes in one of the most shocking swerves in WWE history.
All five episodes of WWE: Unreal are available on Netflix.
