The most recent WWE event that took place in Saudi Arabia, Crown Jewel, and it garnered a lot of unwanted headlines as part of a travel delays controversy.
After the event ended on 31 October, it was reported that the flight which was expected to carry almost 200 WWE personnel, experienced a major delay which WWE attributed to mechanical issues.
WrestlingInc did an interview with a Saudi Arabian journalist Mr. King, who talked about the topic on the WINCLY podcast.
A lot of rumors and speculation filled the internet around the issue. According to initial reports from Dave Meltzer and former WWE commentator Hugo Savinovich, the Prince of Saudi Arabia was allegedly furious that Vince McMahon cancelled the live feed of Crown Jewel as the company was owed up to millions of dollars for previous shows. This lead to the Saudi Crown Prince stopping WWE’s chartered plane from leaving the country in retaliation. The company, however, has denied this in a statement.
Mr. King was asked about the delay in broadcast, and he revealed that the delay did happen and the broadcast was around thirty to forty minutes late.
“I heard about it because when I came home my family told me I was taking photos of something that they weren’t watching on TV. I was taking pictures of something earlier,” said King. There was a delay of maybe 30-40 minutes.”
Mr. King was then asked about the travel issue and he said that while there is no official statement on it, he believes it to be a paperwork problem. “When you take a piece of work for a couple of days and your flight didn’t take you out of the country, it’s a little bit of a problem. There’s a hotel inside the airport and they slept there and took another flight,” he said.
King also said that he thinks that there really was a problem with the plane.
“I think the problem was the plane itself. The team stopped it and said this plane is not safe for you to leave. Thank God they noticed this before they left because it would have been a huge problem if something happened.”
