10 Most Disgusting Promotional Tactics For WWE In Saudi Arabia

3. Best In The World

Disgusting Promotional Tactics WWE Saudi Arabia
WWE.com

This might sound crazy, but Undertaker wasn’t the first 50-plus year-old, semi-retired performer to win a Saudi tournament in which he wasn’t even a competitor.

Crown Jewel 2018 (much more on that show in a bit) featured an eight-man WWE World Cup tournament to crown the “Best in the World.” Such a prestigious cup and title surely would have some of the best wrestlers in the company’s history competing. And while the original list featured former World champions and WrestleMania main-eventers, the finals pitted Dolph Ziggler versus The Miz – not exactly a star-studded conclusion to the tourney.

Oh, but it gets worse.

Miz got “injured” before the final, and SmackDown GM Shane McMahon took his place, then went on to win the tournament, becoming the “Best in the World” and kicking off a miserable gimmick that saw Shane-O-Mac become a tag team champion – in 2019 – and win a WrestleMania 35 match against Miz.

If you’re keeping score, that’s GM McMahon winning a tournament that featured seven former World champions (at the time) by entering at the last minute as an injury replacement. That win (and trophy) would lead to months of wasted screentime dedicated to Shane. Just awful stuff.

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.