AJ Styles Gives His Account Of What Happened In Saudi Arabia

We may never know exactly what went down between WWE and Saudi Arabia last week, but it’s fair to say that whatever it was, it wasn’t very good.

The latest person to give their account of what happened is WWE United States Champion AJ Styles, who was one of the unlucky stranded wrestlers.

Styles spoke about what he went through on his Mixer stream, and it isn’t entirely in line with other reports, but then everyone will have had a different experience, I guess.

“We got to the airport, they weren’t letting us board. What was the problem? Not real sure. I heard there was a fuel truck in the way and the guy who drove the fuel truck had left to go home. I know, this makes no sense. Why would he leave if he knows he has a plane that’s leaving? Then there were some paperwork issues. Finally, after 4-5 hours, we get on the plane. Then the ‘fuel something or another’ was broken. People can say, ‘It wasn’t broken.’

“But I talked to the pilot and he said, ‘Listen, there was a problem. That’s a real thing.’ The problem was, we spent all that time, from 1 o’clock to 6 or 8 in the morning, waiting to get on the plane and them telling us we can’t go anywhere because the pilots had timed out. The pilots can only go so long before they’re not able to fly because they’re not able to go 24 hours at a time. They had to go to a hotel, we had to find a hotel. Were there guns and people like ‘EVERYBODY OFF THE PLANE!’ No, that never happened. Nobody threatened to kill us. Nobody was gonna get murdered.”

One of the reports is that Vince McMahon got into a dispute with the Saudis over unpaid money, but Styles said he isn’t aware of anything like that.

“I have no idea what happened between Vince [McMahon] and [Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman]. That’s not my job to say anything. Was I pretty angry about not getting home because I missed my son’s wrestling match? You have no idea. This was out of our hands and out of the pilot’s hands. There’s no point in getting mad about something I have no control of. We’ll find out as we go along why things happened. Or we won’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward. I’ll deal with it when I need to. But I’m not gonna throw WWE under the bus either. It’s not gonna do me any good to throw anybody under the bus. Until I know more, I’m not gonna say anymore or say anything negative. If I did find out and I was offended, I would go to the source.”

Thankfully everyone that was stranded in Saudi Arabia has now returned home safely, but a number have expressed their displeasure across social media.

Dave Meltzer is also reporting that a number of stars are refusing to ever return to Saudi Arabia if WWE agrees to hold another show.

• Crown Jewel
• AJ Styles
• saudi arabia
• wwe

Share this article with friends