Now We Know: CM Punk Can Talk About Anything He Wants On WWE Backstage ... Except Saudi Arabia
In 2011, those were the issues that mattered to the wrestling community. In 2020, there are more global fish to fry. WWE, over the last decade, has become a major contributor to pop culture. Its social media reach is quite frankly mind-blowing, with even its least popular content reaching millions of people (they currently sit seventh on YouTube’s most subscribed list). However, over the last decade, WWE has also come under heavy criticism for its performance away from the camera, in the boardroom. Before WrestleMania 35, John Oliver set the world alight with his exposure of WWE’s inhumane refusal to class its wrestlers as employees, its association with early wrestler deaths and, of course, its business dealings with Saudi Arabia. Fans were outraged, but satisfied: not only had someone finally called out the WWE, but it was one of the most influential political commentators of the age.
Unlike 2011 and 1997, though, we haven’t seen this dirty laundry spill into the ring – yet. Anyone who has followed this business knows that eventually something will give. It’ll most likely be towards the end of the 10-year deal with the Saudi General Sports Authority (GSA) – something planned, maybe – but the criticisms will expose themselves. With Punk’s debut on Backstage, it was expected that those exposures would come to the forefront a lot sooner; after all, “there’s a lot of stuff that’s broken”.
Realistically, the effect that the Saudi deal will have on cultural awareness and acceptance won’t be known until long after the WWE has left the Kingdom (please god, barring extensions). On a wider scale, the GSA’s reaches into the world of American and European sports is still treated with suspicion. Furthermore, WWE itself has had its issues with the SSA – the plane being held up after Crown Jewel, and reports of missed payments.
There are those that will claim that the product and politics shouldn’t mix. For the most part, they’re right – except in those cases where a real-world problem is so controversial that WWE can’t do anything but reference it in its programming. It has tried to quash stories before, and it’s only ever worked (kind of) with Chris Benoit. More often than not, they spill into the ring. Last week on Backstage, we saw the briefest of glimpses of that when the story prevented the genuinely-kayfabe coverage of a WWE superstar in a context that has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia.
CM Punk returning is great, and most fans will hope to see him back in the ring at some point. That said, he shouldn’t position himself – nor should he be seen as – a heroic independent analyst who’s finally going to assume the voice of the voiceless again. Away from Backstage, it’s possible – his social media usually isn’t too wrestling-focused, but we’ve seen his true colours recently, when he sent a late-night, NSFW Tweet criticizing WWE’s ‘blood money’ deal with Saudi Arabia. It’s hard not to speculate as to whether it was planned or not; we can’t blame drugs or alcohol, as CM Punk is still publicly straight-edge, but the timing was suspicious at best. Either way, he quickly deleted the Tweet – further emphasizing that his reluctance to discuss the controversy doesn’t just extend to appearances on FOX.
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