One billion dollars is a lot of money. It’s an obscene amount of money. It’s the amount of money WWE will have received from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia when their ten-year partnership wraps up in 2028.
There are hundreds of reasons for WWE not to do business with Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, there are a billion reasons for the company to turn a blind eye and ignore the gross underbelly of that relationship. Two different leadership regimes in WWE have green lit the Saudi Arabia partnership and despite blowback, bad PR, and low viewerships numbers, the relationship between those two money-hungry entities has only grown over the years.
The Saudi Arabia shows used to be glorified, offshoot, house shows that lived on the outskirts of real WWE programming. Now, the shows are premiere programming, ingrained into the fabric of the company with WrestleMania next year emanating from the country and outside of North America for the first time in history.
Last weekend, WWE ran their Crown Jewel event from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event was blistered with more drama than usual because of significant violence in the country that forced the US Embassy to issue security warnings that called for non-essential personnel in the country to leave. A Houthi missile hit the Riyadh international airport in the weeks prior to the event and killed 13 people, while injuring many more. As United States citizens were leaving the violence-stricken country, WWE planes filled with crew and talent were flying directly to the threat.
Odd circumstances
Since the Triple H creative regime took over WWE in 2022, WWE PLE’s have consistently been five matches deep. This year’s Crown Jewel had only four matches on it. The number was odd because of the card patterns over the years, but also because a match that appeared primed to secure the fifth slot on the card was ready, but not used. Finn Balor vs. Gunther.
Curious. Balor and Gunther had been in the middle of an intense feud. The week prior to Crown Jewel, Balor broke out his Demon character and attacked Gunther, which usually signals that a match is on the horizon. Instead, Crown Jewel stayed at four matches and the Balor vs. Gunther match was scheduled for this week’s episode of SmackDown.
According to the Wrestling Observer, Gunther turned down the trip to Saudi Arabia this year and therefore the Balor match was canceled. That’s a flex and I’m impressed.
