Daniel Bryan will not be traveling to Saudi Arabia for Crown Jewel, according to PWInsider, who confirmed the story with several sources. The story was rumored last week.
Bryan reportedly “made it clear” to WWE last week that he would not be participating in the show and WWE began making alternate plans. Bryan was scheduled to face AJ Styles for the WWE Championship.
As of yesterday, WWE planned on doing a segment where Daniel Bryan and AJ Styles would wrestle at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando and that footage would be inserted into Crown Jewel, but WWE dropped those plans, PWInsider says. That would have meant that AJ Styles also wouldn’t have traveled to Saudi Arabia, but since that was scrapped, signs are now pointing to Styles making the trip.
WWE is advertising that Styles will “confront” Bryan tonight on SmackDown, so how WWE explains things will obviously be more clear tonight. One possibility that was mentioned to PWInsider was using Rusev as a replacement against Styles. WWE could also have Styles and Bryan wrestle tonight on SmackDown instead of the PPV.
Yesterday, it was confirmed that John Cena is also off of the show. He’ll be replaced in the World Cup by Bobby Lashley.
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