John Pollock & Wai Tingpresent a special live POST Show immediately following WWE Crown Jewel.
Beyond discussing the results of this event, we conducting in-depth interviews about the various issues surrounding WWE's involvement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
For every minute of this broadcast, POST Wrestling will donate $5 towards the Committee to Protect Journalists (https://cpj.org/).
Iām very curious to see if WWE will actually dig itself into enough of a whole where the fans will stop supporting it. Its important to remember that we are in year 1 of 10 in this Saudi Arabia deal. That WWE is okay with presenting a publicly known racist as a white meat babyface on their programā¦and that several weeks of TV devotion will go into promoting Saudia Arabia shows each year.
It would not be a stretch to say that 2.5 months of WWE tv each year is now devoted towards promoting Saudi Arabia.
So far the only responses weāve seen is some charity streams and a couple people boycotting the PPV itself. Neither of these actions have any real consequence for WWE when you consider this is just one of many network specials they air. Sure people are sending a message of protestā¦but when that protest comes with absolutely no danger to WWEās bottom lineā¦I question just how effective its going to be.
I will say that I recognize WWE stocks have taken a hitā¦and that could genuinely create changeā¦but its too early to determine the cause of this hit. Which is to say we donāt know if this is a response to recent poltical eventsā¦or if every show in Saudi Arabia for the next 9 years will have an equal drop in the market even if nothing ānews worthyā comes up to spark additional backlash.
Iām curious if thereās going to be a point where any of the major wrestling content creators I follow choose to outright ban WWE content all year around in protest. As a fan of wrestling I wish weād get more coverage and discussion on NJPW, Lucha Underground and others. But the focus has always been 90% WWE because thatās where the audience and ultimately money comes from.
Really great show guys, thanks for this. Loved all the guests, especially the discussion of the wider context. ?Huge respect for both donating all that money, and going so long without sounding tired/bored.
Really liked the show. I would suggest if you plan to have such a long show in the future to split it up in audio form though.
I was watching live so it wasnāt an issue for me - but imagining to listen to this after the fact would be extremely difficult for me. Even with the timestamps provided.
Nothing much to add apart from whatās already been said. Thank you so much for taking on such an ambitious project, guys. No form of culture exists in a vacuum, and the people who say ākeep politics out of my hobbyā are only voluntarily ignoring the degree to which their hobby already has been politically constructed. The wrestling world needs more work like this.
