It was announced last night during Raw that John Cena had been kicked out of the Crown Jewel World Cup tournament and replaced with Bobby Lashley, which was first reported over a week ago.
During the broadcast WWE hyped tonight’s SmackDown, promising a confrontation between WWE Champion AJ Styles and Crown Jewel challenger Daniel Bryan.
Along with Cena, Bryan has also been reported as someone who morally opposes WWE’s decision to run in Saudi Arabia and is planning on sitting out the show.
We noted last week that WWE’s plan for Bryan was to carry on advertising him for the event regardless but shoot a pre-tape of him being taken out of the match that would then be edited into Crown Jewel.
It is possible that WWE have changed their mind on that approach and are planning on removing Bryan from the match tonight. The alternative may be that an angle during the confrontation will lead to the pair wrestling their title match on SmackDown this evening, three days early.
If nothing like that happens and Bryan continues to be advertised as planned then we likely will not know if he is actually going to Crown Jewel until the event itself, unless news leaks prior to that about whether or not he gets on the plane on Wednesday.
Dave Meltzer has noted that when asking about the Bryan story he has not received any concrete answers one way or another and with something like this he would expect the company to deny the reports. That suggests Bryan is not going and WWE want to keep quiet about it or that they are still negotiating with him.
Either way, WWE have the opportunity to make the situation a lot more clear this evening based on their actions during the broadcast. It will be very interesting indeed to see how it unfolds.
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