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John Cena and Daniel Bryan have been invited to work this Friday's WWE Crown Jewel event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, we have our answer. It was not a straight forward from the promotion itself, unsurprisingly-WWE had so often refused to address it. Raw and SmackDown. Cena was written off Crown Jewel swiftly, in a near-throwaway segment, while Bryan's match was moved up to last night's SmackDown. In an attempt to dodge the controversial controversy of two of its biggest stars, the most controversial show, WWE seems to have plotted the wrestlers' removal until the latest possible juncture.
A number of different reporters and outlets broke out of the story throughout the week, with all those developments stemming from Barstool's Robbie Fox tweeting about it last Monday. It makes sense for Cena, with his burgeoning film career, to pull out; Bryan, since he's arguably the most widely openly leftist pro wrestler, also seems like a poor fit for a card in a murderous authoritarian monarchy. Per Pro Ryan's Wrestling Sheet's Ryan Satin, both were moved to take control of the world by Jamal Khashoggi. In a statement to Satin, a WWE spokesperson wrote that "As always, we would like to make a statement about our situation." (WWE did not respond to Satin's request for a clarification about whether Bryan, who the company clbadifies as an independent contractor, would be permitted to skip the show.)
If there was any chance of WWE changing the wrestlers' minds over the weekend, that probably diminished after HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver revisited the WWE / Saudi Arabia deal on Sunday night. Cena's reported reluctance to do the show, and, in a mock Crown Jewel promo video, the narrator said that he was pulling out to avoid the negative press. If nothing else, Oliver kept the story going and amped up the potential embarrbadment for all involved. That's apparently not an issue where WWE is concerned, but Cena made his choice.
That left the work of writing the show off. Cena is not anything close to a full-time wrestler anymore; he has not been on TV in months, and he could not be directly involved. Instead, WWE's figurehead authority is Baron Corbin simply removed from the World Cup tournament and replaced by Bobby Lashley, noting that he has not qualified to win a match to enter the field. The segment has been made to work, but it has not been promoted.
Bryan, meanwhile, showed up on TV this week having a lot to do with it, which would be a hilarious way to protest if nothing else, and then saw his much-hyped match with A.J. Styles moved up to SmackDown. After a longer than usual TV match-the-length suggests that it was something they had been working on for Riyadh-Styles retained the WWE Championship. At that point Samoa Joe ran in and set himself for the title shot at Styles at Crown Jewel. If you were not aware of the news about both Cena and Bryan pulling out, the Bryan-related changes-schedule-wise and outcomes-outcome would have been more conspicuous. It has been a long time since the beginning of the game. It has been a ghost outside of the world that it was shooting excerpt, which made its excision something WWE could handle a minor bit of a throwaway skit.
For Bryan, however, what has been reported to be the first step in the promotion of had in mind. It may not have been the second. According to Mike Johnson of PWInsider (site may contain malicious advertisements), there was an attempt to arrange for Bryan to go to Orlando and shoot their match at the WWE Performance Center for insertion into the Crown Jewel broadcast. Johnson did not say why that option fell apart, but the Saudis wanting Styles on the actual live event or Bryan refusing to appear on the show in any form-it's a propaganda event, after all-seem like fair. It could have been both.
On Tuesday, Satin reported that Raw announcer Renee Young will also be making the trip for Crown Jewel, making the first female WWE personality to appear in Saudi Arabia. This is noticeable in the sense that, while women are famously barred from appearing in the Royal Rumble in Jeddah, it has become personal, at any level, made the trip. Not Co-President Michelle Wilson, Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon-Levesque and Charly Caruso, or JoJo Offerman. Renee's varied outfits are part of her personal brand, but it seems to be expected at Crown Jewel.
The last mystery left in the Crown Jewel, at this point, is the outright propaganda that defined WWE's first Saudi show will be back. Jeddah is in the week or so before that city hosted the Greatest Royal Rumble, but no such shilling for Riyadh has preceded this one. The promotion has gone out of its way to avoid even saying "Saudi Arabia," though even references to "Crown Jewel" itself has drawn noticeable boos
And yet, the propaganda is clearly part of the royal family's share of millions of these WWE shows. These gaudy supercards may or may not work as wrestling shows, but that's only out of the point. They are intended as a vehicle for the idealized version of the country that's jogging the bill, and it seems likely that they would remove said propaganda from the internationally-broadcast wrestling shows that they're paying for. WWE, if not all of its wrestlers, appears happy to hold up its end of the deal.
David Bixenspan is a freelance writer from Brooklyn, NY who co-hosts the Between The Sheets podcast every Monday at BetweenTheSheetsPod.com and everywhere else that podcasts are available. You can follow him on Twitter at @davidbix and view his portfolio at Clippings.me/davidbix.
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