Why Daniel Bryan Didn’t Want to Wrestle in Saudi Arabia

Daniel Bryan will not be wrestling in Saudi Arabia at Crown Jewel this Friday. That decision by Bryan was made during the week of October 15 at the height of the controversy over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Both Bryan and Vince McMahon agreed to keep the decision a secret, but rumors leaked about a week later.

Bryan worked WWE’s last show in Saudi Arabia, the Greatest Royal Rumble in April, and had apparently not known too much about Saudi Arabia at the time. After the show and after learning more about them, he felt that he couldn’t go again under the circumstances, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The current controversy over Jamal Khashoggi was reportedly not the (major) reason for his decision, but it clearly gave him a possible out and likely helped solidify his opinions. In addition to Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women, a key thing was that Bryan also learned about their treatment of homosexuals. Another big reason was that Saudi Arabia banned Sami Zayn from the show in April because he’s Syrian.

Bryan reportedly asked to lose the #1 contender match against The Miz at Super Show-Down, either because he knew that the winner would have to go to Saudi Arabia, or because he felt that it wasn’t the right time to be in the title picture, or both.

Bryan and Styles had their title match at SmackDown instead, with Bryan jobbing cleanly, tapping out to a calf crusher. It’s really hard to not see this as WWE “sending a message” to others for refusing to tow the company line. But, WWE needed to move on to the Styles vs. Samoa Joe match, so a clean finish was a way to end the Styles and Bryan program for now.

One bizarre idea that WWE reportedly had was to have Bryan and Styles wrestle in an empty arena at a technology center near the Performance Center in Orlando. The ring there could be shot in a way to make it seem that they were in any building, similar to a green screen. So a possible idea was apparently to shoot the match there and pretend that it was happening in Saudi Arabia. It would have not aired for the live Saudi crowd and instead would have just been aired on the WWE Network. Obviously, if they went that route, chances are that the news would have come out somehow (or it maybe would have been obvious) and it would have lead to more controversy since they were trying to cover up the fact that Bryan was not going in a bizarre way. Another idea was to just have an empty arena match, but it’s not clear how they would have explained that. Empty arena matches with no crowd reactions also usually don’t come off well. In the end, they probably went with the best and most simple move of just having the match happen on SmackDown.

Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter