7 Early DISASTERS From WWE In Saudi Arabia
1. A Nightmare On Every Level (Crown Jewel, 2018)
When Shawn Michaels retired at WrestleMania 26, there was immediate speculation about when – not if – HBK would renege on the stipulation and compete again. Retirement stipulations are rarely worth the paper they’re printed on, and there was plenty of evidence within WWE itself that the company would lure him back for a one-off match.
But Michaels managed to honor the stipulation for more than eight years, convincing many that he was going to be that rare exception of a wrestler who actually walked away from the ring and stayed away. That is, until the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia backed up a Brinks truck to the Michaels household. HBK came out of retirement to re-form D-Generation X with Triple H for “one night only” so they could battle the Brothers of Destruction, Kane and The Undertaker.
Honestly, everyone should have seen this disaster coming 10 kilometers away. Kane was the only one of them who was even competing semi-regularly, having logged seven televised matches in 2018 to that point. Taker had wrestled just six matches in the previous three years. Triple H had stepped between the ropes five times in two-plus years, and the quality of those matches was declining. While no one was expecting a classic, fans couldn’t have predicted what would ensue.
Aside from the match being a turkey in the ring with four men with an average age north of 51 plodding along, it was snakebitten from the jump. Triple H tore his pectoral muscle, severely limiting The Game. Kane lost his mask at one point, which was embarrassing enough, but his long, black wig came off with it, revealing the same, decidedly unscary Corporate Kane fans had reviled for years.
Michaels looked like a sad shell of himself, wrestling a nothing match for a quick payday in front of fans who were performatively reacting, rather than a hot, high-stakes match worthy of going back on a retirement stipulation eight years later. It was so bad that Michaels has since claimed that he considers WrestleMania 26 his true final match, that Crown Jewel 2018 didn’t count because it was a tag team one-off contest.
When the main attraction of a show’s main event essentially disavows the match, you know that you have a disaster of the highest order.