With less than a day to go before WWE’s Super Showdown in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, there is a story which for long-term news and propaganda purposes makes the first and probably last Undertaker vs. Bill Goldberg mach seem like nothing.
Last year, WWE embarked on the ten-year deal with Saudi Arabia, which. At the time, was, with the exception of U.S. television deals over the last half dozen years, it was the biggest money deal the company had ever signed for anything. The WWE announced one show a year, which became two both of which generate more money each for the company than the biggest WrestleMania in history.
Of course in doing so, there were ugly truths and got uglier. WWE has tried to promote women as equal to men and as legitimate in-ring competitors after generations of them being either a side show, or a T&A product masquerading as wrestling. WWE has tried to get rid of the ugly stereotypes that the industry had until the recent generation, from savage Islanders to German Nazis to bald-headed Russians, salt throwing Japanese and other foreigner who are there to put down Americans. And don’t get us started with Mexican landscapers and the wonderful track record with pretty much any ethnicity that be exploited by ugly stereotypes.
The company clung to Martin Luther King. Made the broadcast desk this weird affirmative action platform with a steady stream of bad commentators put there because of gender or race as opposed to ability. But with so much money in their face, they, without even debating, threw it away. Well, actually, they didn’t. The goal was to have their cake and eat it to. They still build one Raw a year around Martin Luther King Jr., spout on about being at the forefront of a women’s cultural evolution that they’re actually more than 50 years behind tennis, basketball, skating and pretty much every sport on.
While at the same time, they made this deal. Worse, last year, the same government they made the deal with lured in a reporter for the Washington Post in a planned out murder. Now, the reporter wouldn’t come to their country after they kept trying to entice him. But they got him to their embassy in Turkey, and then not just killed him, but dismembered him first.
This was, of course, inconvenient timing for WWE. It wasn’t fair. Why should we suffer on a deal we already made just because it was a deal with murderers who culture goes against pretty much everything we cling to in our home market propaganda.
Granted, the second show was no longer the paid for propaganda piece of the first. Things are a little more calm now.
No senators are telling them they shouldn’t go. The murder was months ago. While some companies pulled out of doing business with them, most didn’t. Although its laughable the idea that Starbucks opening stores in a country is compared with a deal by the guy who from all evidence plotted and then attempted to cover up the murder. Did Starbucks, in exchange, have Saudi Arabian propaganda all over their U.S. stores and having signs everywhere telling people how progressive the new leadership in Saudi Arabia is?
Sometime in the ten-year deal, WWE was going to get another bragging point. At some point in the next ten years, women would be allowed to wrestle on a show. WWE has already promoted hard having this breakthrough in Abu Dhabi as being of some cultural significance, touting a very light chant of “this is hope” as a key line for years in company speeches. Keep in mind that TNA had a women’s match years earlier, so it wasn’t a breakthrough at all. And it’s hardly a culture change.
But, for real, there will be a time, and it may even be on 6/7, that WWE does host the first women’s pro wrestling match in Saudi Arabia. Natalya and Alexa Bliss are in Saudi Arabia as of this writing.
WWE will take credit for changing culture. Of course, that’s silly. There are women competing in sports at schools (only in private schools, so rich has its privilege but two years ago women in public schools were allowed to at least take P.E. classes). Until last year, women were prohibited from attending any events in most stadiums. Last year that changed, although they are allowed at shows like this, although it is segregated seating. Somehow I don’t think the female Sputnik Monroe is coming from WWE to modernize this and change society, but we shall see.
Women’s basketball competition dates back to 2003.
By the way, it was outside forces that have led to changes for women in Saudi Arabia.
It wasn’t WWE, it was the IOC. You know how they did it? Before the 2012 Olympics, they told Saudi Arabia that if you don’t have a women’s team, your men’s team is banned from competing. Suddenly, there were women, at least in certain social circles, allowed to compete in sports, private school were allowed sports teams and they’ve sent women to the last two Olympics.
Going there, taking the money, and waiting as is going on at this writing for the government to decide what it’s going to do hardly qualifies. Still, will WWE at some pont, maybe next week, talk about its influence more than you ever heard watching the last two Olympics? Yes.
So here’s the situation. At one point, evidently the government told WWE that they would allow them to have a women’s bout on the 6/7 show in Jeddah, which is a more progressive city than Riyadh, likely the home of the November show.
That may explain why there is no All-women’s PPV show on the 2019 schedule after how successful, at least aesthetically, the first show was.
But it’s gone back-and-forth. WWE never spoke a word about it, because it would be an embarrassment if they promoted it and then got the thumbs down when they arrived. But now, it’s still going to be tough. The news is out that Natalya and Bliss are in Saudi Arabia with the idea of doing a match. There is no confirmation such a match will or won’t take place. The company has hinted about it in case it doesn’t. But if it doesn’t, the company does look bad because at that point they would have been strung along, and then told no. For that reason, if Saudi Arabia looks at the big picture and doesn’t want to embarrass WWE, they need to allow it. They care enough about not embarrassing WWE that they allowed them to do the second show without spouting the propaganda that the relationship was built on in the first place.
Even now, WWE has promoted the show, constantly talking about how it is as big or bigger than WrestleMania, using the city “Jeddah,” but banning the term Saudi Arabia from its own television. Of course that term isn’t banned with all the localized promos the wrestlers have done for that market.
Really, there’s no reason women shouldn’t be allowed on the show. The IOC forced them to allow women to compete in sports. The Russian circus came to town and for whatever reason, they were allowed to have their women perform in tight outfits. Of course, that led to a conservative backlash and the people who okayed that ended up it hot water over it. Mariah Carey performed there on 1/31, and was heavily criticized for doing so, more covered up than se would be at a U.S. concert, but still flashingly dressed. Actually most of the criticism of her came from Saudi Arabian women, who felt a star of her stature shouldn’t endorse and do the bidding of a government that treats women the way they do. Unlike Carey, WWE is way below the line that people in the U.S., or Saudi Arabia, would care. And it was believed the government brought in Carey specifically to rebuild its image after the Khashoggi murder.
