WWE: It's time to stop doing the shows in Saudi Arabia

The WWE held their latest Saudi Arabia show on Halloween. The card was decent. The Fiend won the Universal title, Lesnar made Cain tap, and Natayla had the first woman’s match. My problem isn’t with the card, my problem lies with the the whole concept. The WWE is a global company and are going for every market they can. One of the ones that they got into was the Middle East. However to be more precise, Saudi Arabia.

The WWE have done three house shows in Saudi Arabia from 2014-2016. It wasn’t until 2018, when the WWE decided to start doing live events from Saudi Arabia. The first event was the Greatest Royal Rumble back in the Spring of 2018. The trend has been two shows in Saudi Arabia every year. Typically, they have worked out to happen right after WrestleMania and prior to Survivor Series. It seems that every time they are set to do an event in Saudi Arabia, there’s been a problem. If you recall prior to the first Crown Jewel event in 2018, there was the assassination of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Right after this happened, there was a ton of tension in that area. It happened that the assassination was near the arena that was going to host Crown Jewel.

Then fast forward to this year’s Crown Jewel. The event was good, but the problem happened afterwards. Depending on who you read, you will get a different response. The WWE reported that there were mechanical issues with their planes, but the stars wouldn’t leave for 12-14 hours later. Other people reported that Vince McMahon pulled the live feed of Crown Jewel after the Saudi Arabian government has failed to pay on the last few events.

There seems to be a number of wrestlers who don’t want to go back and I don’t blame them. I understand the WWE got paid a nice amount of money to do these shows, but at what cost. There are a number of wrestlers who want out of the company because of this mess. This is just a small step on WWE continuing to go downhill.