10 Reasons WWE Should Never Return To Saudi Arabia
2. Jamal Khashoggi
On the 2nd of October 2018, the Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated in the Saudi consulate in Instanbul by agents of the Saudi government. This came after the alleged use of Israeli spyware to hack his phone.
His crime? Writing articles that were critical of the Saudi government and royal family. He also opposed Saudi intervention in Yemen.
Khashoggi had fled Saudi Arabia the previous year. He lived in self-imposed exile, afraid to return and was only visiting the consulate to pick up documents ahead of his planned wedding.
Khashoggi’s death shocked the world’s media and he was named “Person of the Year” by Time magazine, who called him, “a guardian of the truth”.
Beyond this particularly high profile case, many other Saudi critics have been reported missing under suspicious circumstances.
This is trivial relative to a man’s death of course but it was terrible timing for WWE. Exactly a month ahead of Crown Jewel. Some expected WWE to distance themselves from the Saudi Government at this point. If anything they doubled down on controversy by using the event to bring the problematic Hulk Hogan back into the WWE fold.
Still, the assassination of a Saudi journalist by the government made WWE’s continued involvement with Saudi Arabia untenable in the eyes of many.