Middle East Misadventures – WWE’s Troubled History With Saudi Arabia

Middle East Misadventures – WWE’s Troubled History With Saudi Arabia

WWE returns to Saudi Arabia later this month for the next event in their decade-long deal with the Middle Eastern kingdom. Dave Bradshaw takes a look at the troubled first three years of their partnership…

At 1:15pm on 2nd October 2018, a Saudi Arabian journalist named Jamal Khashoggi walked into his country’s consulate in Istanbul for a routine appointment – planning to marry his Turkish fiancée, he needed a document to confirm that he was divorced. In the year leading up to the appointment Khashoggi had been living in self-imposed exile in the United States where he was writing monthly columns for the Washington Post, many of which were critical of his homeland’s new crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. That might have been a dangerous game to play if he had still been living in his native land, but on foreign soil he had no particular concerns for his safety.

He should have. He was never seen again.

After denying any knowledge of the missing dissident’s whereabouts for over two weeks, Saudi authorities eventually admitted that he had been killed inside the building, claiming that he died during a struggle with officials and eventually sending eight men to jail. The Turkish government concluded, based in part on audio recordings that intelligence officers obtained of the killing, that Mr Khashoggi had been the victim of a premeditated murder by a 15-man “death squad” who cut his body into pieces and had it removed secretly from the premises, having removed CCTV cameras before his arrival. Later a United Nations report said that the attack had been ordered by the Saudi government, and US media reported that the CIA had “medium to high” confidence that the instruction came from Prince Mohammed himself – a charge that he has denied.

A pretty gruesome story for sure, but what does any of this have to do with professional wrestling? Well, as it happens, quite a lot: the incident took place less than six months after WWE had announced a lucrative multi-year deal to stage regular supershows in Saudi Arabia, and the controversy was reaching its peak just weeks before the company was due to host its second such event in the kingdom, entitled Crown Jewel. What would follow was a torrent of negative publicity, including US Senators from both parties urging WWE to reconsider and a brutal on-air critique of the company from British comedian John Oliver on his popular show ‘Last Week Tonight’. Top stars John Cena, Daniel Bryan and Roman Reigns all reportedly refused to work the show (in Reigns’ case this became a moot point because his leukaemia diagnosis in October would have kept him off the show anyway), and the timing of Saudi Arabia’s admission that Khashoggi had indeed died in their consulate coincided with the day that tickets for the event were supposed to go on sale.

WWE’s handling of the situation was hardly a masterclass in public relations either: they initially released a statement saying only that they were “monitoring the situation”, before suddenly removing most references to Saudi Arabia and Crown Jewel from their website on 19th October, right around the time when the ticket sale was due to begin. Six days later a statement was released saying that the company would “uphold its contractual obligations” by proceeding with the event, but by now all on-air mentions of the event’s location were absent from WWE television and live crowds seemed to be booing every mention of the words “Crown Jewel”. Stephanie McMahon attempted to justify the choice to go ahead in an interview with Sky Sports, claiming that “it was an incredibly tough decision, given that heinous act… but, at the end of the day, it is a business decision and, like a lot of other American companies, we decided that we’re going to move forward with the event.” The reputational damage for WWE – at least in the short term – felt as bad as anything it had experienced for over a decade, but in hindsight the trouble had been brewing for a while. Even before the Khashoggi controversy, the relationship announced earlier in 2018 had already got off to a rocky start.

2 years ago by Connel Rumsey

@connel1405

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