Report: WWE talent delayed leaving Saudi Arabia

It’s his club not mine. If JR and Regal and Mick Foley did it why not Mansoor?

You wonder if this falls under “unsafe working conditions”? And would that nullify some contracts.

If we’re gonna praise Bryan & Steen for staying back we can’t have much sympathy to the talent who went. I’m not sad they had an extra travel day. They were safe. MBS is a fan, he likes them.

But we can all agree Vince was a coward for leaving his roster (if thats how it happened).

I don’t know about any of the others but i believe Ali donates his Saudi Arabia earnings to charity.

On the other hand, Karl Anderson said “Couldn’t pay me enough to go back …
Well that’s not true, I need a second pool, so…”
- so yeah, little sympathy is needed for people with that attitude.

Are we 100% sure this was on purpose/had nothing to do with Weather? I just wanna make sure before I pass this message on in conversation.

If the reports are true about the non payments for the last two shows and the talents being held back because of “mechanical issues.” You guys think the number of talent that go to these shows will start to drop off next year?

1 Like

That is some scary stuff. Would also suck if a performer went all that way and didn’t get the proper pay.

On the plus side they put smiles on those kids faces, they broke women’s barriers and they performed for a non smart crowd who didn’t boo the faces. It’s not always about the money.

They made a difference. Like Fatu

2 Likes

I can only hope he’s joking as he always is.

Stuff like this doesn’t get made up out of thin air. We’ll probably never know the 100% truth, but it should be clear to anyone that there was more going on than mechanical issues or weather.

Buddy Murphy isn’t going to tweet “never again” over plane issues or weather, when he flies weekly.

Luke Harper and Curtis Axel aren’t going to tweet about not being in the top 20, over weather.

It’s sickening to me going on other forums and seeing people who hate on AEW, totally dismissing this as fake news, because they think Meltzer works for AEW.

There’s a story here. People in the company aren’t happy.

2 Likes

Possibly the best thing you’ve ever posted here, Brother Patel…Salute. :fist:t4::rofl::100:

2 Likes

Yup listening to PWTorch Wade Keller said he had been in touch with talent and they were not happy. I mean mechanical issues? Is there only one plane?

1 Like

This story should be covered beyond our wrestling bubble. There are financial implications for a public company. There is the international component of another country essentially holding Americans as some sort of retaliation against other Americans. There is a corporate cover up.

The fact this could be ia corporate cover up perpetrated by the chairman of a company with public shareholders is wild - anywhere other than wrestling there’d be massive outrage.

Imagine Facebook engineers were prevented from flying home in a country with the history of Saudi Arabia and Zuckerberg dismissed it as an issue with a plane.

5 Likes

I mean if you can’t trust a vicious, homophobic dictatorship who murders journalists without hesitation who can you trust these days?

So you’re saying that just because these guys wanted to perform, they deserve to go through the shit they did? A lot of guys don’t feel like they are on that level, where they can just refuse to go. And what makes you think they were safe? We know the things that go on over there. If someone can be cool with beheading someone else, that makes them a psychopath and not someone that can be trusted.

Plus, MBS likes Yokozuna and Ultimate Warrior. He probably doesn’t give a shit about Shorty G or the B Team.

2 Likes

Yeah, not everyone can just tell their WWE employers that they aren’t going and not suffer a consequence. I’m sure there are performers who didn’t want to go, but feel if they made a big deal out of it that it could affect their career.

It is also interesting that people think guys saying no haven’t had any consequences. How is Sami Zayn doing? Has he gotten any titles? How about KO recently? Daniel Bryan? I mean if the Saudi’s want the title and the champ doesn’t want to go what do you think is going to happen?

2 Likes

Sami Zayn doesn’t have any choice. He’s Syrian and if WWE are punishing him for that fact then we’re going into different territories of WWE’s lack of ethics. Likewise Noam Dar (Israeli).

Daniel Bryan won the WWE title a week after the second Saudi Arabia show.

KO has had WWE title shots and tons of TV time in major storylines with Shane McMahon since refusing to go to the Saudi Arabia shows.

Your theory doesn’t really add up.

4 Likes

KO had a terrible storyline with Shane, and got title shots, but his program with Kofi was preempted by Dolph because Saudi Arabia. Bryan has a run but it never went through a Saudi show and his rematch with Kofi was fast tracked. It is going to limit the success of people that refuse to go because they won’t be allowed to hold belts if they won’t go to the shows.

1 Like

All three of those guys are booked on television basically every week. And, in general, to equate “getting a title” to anything is short-sighted. Dolph Ziggler has won like three titles a year for the past decade and the Internet cries that he’s being buried every time he takes a loss on TV.

Yes, there are always consequences to voluntary missing a major show in the sense that they want the belts and major storylines to lead up to and be represented that show, so a guy might be left out in the cold because of that. But I wouldn’t definitively call that “punishment” in any sort of vindictive sense.

1 Like