Icon vs "Icon"? Is WWE Making A Mistake?

[88YoePride]

 

So... WWE brings back Cody Rhodes after letting him go because the "Stardust" gimmick wasn't working , and he went and helped Tony Khan build AEW. Have him win his first Royal Rumble and challenge Roman Reigns, who Vince had been building to be the "face of the company" and who was over a thousand days into his current title run, mostly thanks to a Ric Flair/Four Horsemen dynamic with his "Bloodline", building up a huge RassleMania match in which a lot of fans expected Rhodes to be the one to finally dethrone Reigns. Only to see Cody also fall to cheating by Reigns' henchmen. 

One year later, Rhodes becomes the first performer to win back-to-back Rumbles since Stone Cold, and there's been a couple weeks of anticipation and setup to him challenging Reigns again.

In the meantime, The Rock had made a surprise appearance on Raw and hinted at challenging Reigns.

Then Friday night, this happens...

And fans are excoriating WWE in comment sections across social media.

So - Is WWE making a big mistake here?