21 Biggest Wrestling Stories Of 2018

When WWE announced a supremely lucrative 10-year partnership with the Saudi Arabian General Sports Authority as part of the country's 'Vision 2030' programme back in March, most of us assumed the deal would comprise a few non-canonical shows in the Middle East per year, with the sole remit of entertainment.

How wrong we were.

It transpired that WWE weren't just being paid piles of petrodollars to broaden the hitherto repressed population's leisure options, but to directly promote the regime's apparent new-found 'progressiveness'. Progressiveness which allowed women to drive, for example, but didn't permit them to attend events without a chaperone. Progressiveness which still punished homosexuality with imprisonment and the death penalty. Progressiveness which was nothing more than bluster, designed to reassert the ruling family's power with one eye on fading oil revenues.

The Greatest Royal Rumble - WWE's first show with their new but strictly separate bed-fellows - was a ludicrous farce, featuring a 50-man Battle Royal and precisely zero women during the midst of the company's drive for gender equality. Throughout the event, commentators repeatedly plugged Saudi Arabia, acting as puppets for the government's soft diplomacy. It was without question one of the darkest days in the history of the business... for a few months.