To make things even worse for Crown Jewel, several talent have expressed not wanting to fly to Saudi Arabia for the event. This all stems from the rising tension between the United States and Saudi Arabia after a Washington Post journalist was kidnapped and presumed murdered.
During the Wrestling Observer Radio, Bryan Alvarez noted how several wrestlers he spoke with do not want to visit Saudi Arabia to the recent problems.
“I haven’t talked to everybody on the WWE roster but I can tell you that a lot of the people that are scheduled to go to Saudi Arabia; they don’t want to go to Saudi Arabia,” said Alvarez. “In fact, the majority of the talent doesn’t want to go to Saudi Arabia but the office wants to go to Saudi Arabia and they have shareholders that they want to please with all of these big money deals that they’re getting. We’ll see what happens.”
WWE has been tight-lipped about the status of the show. They issued a one sentence statement about monitoring the situation. Since then, several top United States Senators have urged that the event be moved or cancelled. In another interesting twist, WWE removed Crown Jewel from their calendar. While it still appears under the ‘shows’ section on the WWE website, there is no mention of Saudi Arabia.
If WWE has to make big changes regarding Crown Jewel, they are running out of time. A final decision could be made before this week’s RAW or SmackDown since storylines need to be built and the arena needs to be prepared.
Crown Jewel is November 2 and part of a lucrative 10 year deal WWE made with the Saudi Arabian government. Earlier in the year, they held their first major event with the Greatest Royal Rumble. From a financial standpoint, the show was a major success.
