How WWE MUST Respond To The Super ShowDown Disaster
Subjectively AND objectively, Super ShowDown was a colossal dud.
WWE returned to Saudi Araba with Super ShowDown 2019 this Friday past (7 June), delivering the usual blend of third-gear in-ring action, glacial legends matches, and insignificant storyline "developments," all played out before a tepid Jeddah crowd.
Predictably, this "WrestleMania equivalent event" has been met with an overwhelmingly negative critical response. Some will write this off as a product of western wrestling media's supposed bias against these Saudi shows, but it's hard to defend what WWE delivered even when removing the location and political ramifications from the discussion.
We're constantly told that these shows exist to give the Sports Entertainment-starved local fans a fun night of action and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see guys like The Undertaker perform. A few choice moments aside, Super ShowDown failed to hit this goal. Mansoor's battle royal victory got a pop, Jeddah came alive for Randy Orton vs. Triple H's third act, and there were a few louder moments for Goldberg vs. 'Taker too. The rest of the show largely played out to silence. You could hear a rat p*ss on cotton.
Match quality is subjective. Whether or not something worked for the live crowd is not, and if the whole point of these shows is to deliver something that works for the live crowd was the point of SSD, it was an objective flop.
A disaster.
CONT'd...