Rumor: Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia “in Jeopardy”

Crown Jewel may not take place in Saudi Arabia after all, according to reports going around.

Dave Meltzer said on Wrestling Observer Radio that the show is “very much in jeopardy” as of now and there is pressure on Vince McMahon from “outside forces” to not go.

As of last week, it seemed that WWE was almost certainly going to go and reports were that it would take something like the US government or Donald Trump himself asking WWE not to go for them to cancel the show.

As reported yesterday, tickets for Crown Jewel are also still not on sale, despite them being scheduled to go on sale in Saudi Arabia on Friday. According to Dave Meltzer, the website handling the ticket sales told people who asked that WWE has still not confirmed with them that the show will go on.

There are also rumors that John Cena and Daniel Bryan are “refusing” to do the show. Meltzer said that WWE’s creative team was told on Monday that Cena would not be doing the show, so he would need to be replaced in the World Cup, but on Raw, he was still being advertised. It could be that WWE is trying to convince him to still go, or that they’re looking at switching venues.

Robbie Fox from Barstool Sports also added that WWE is currently “frantically scouting locations to move Crown Jewel to.”

UPDATE: WWE is currently in the process of frantically scouting locations to move Crown Jewel to. This is NOT definite confirmation that it's out of Saudi Arabia, but the location and date are unquestionably in major jeopardy right now.

— Robbie Fox (@RobbieBarstool) October 23, 2018

If WWE does end up pulling out of the show, the obvious question would be what would happen to the ten year deal that they signed with Saudi Arabia. Will WWE just go back in a couple of months when the “heat” has died down? WWE is being paid a lot of money by Saudi Arabia for Crown Jewel, which they used to give big pay days to Shawn Michaels, Brock Lesnar and others.