Triple H Comments On Women Being Excluded From WWE Greatest Royal Rumble
"Every culture is different" - but he reckons that will change.
As exciting as the prospect of WWE's utterly ludicrous Greatest Royal Rumble set for this Friday is, it is somewhat weighed down by the Greatest Elephant in the Room - chiefly, the absolute omission of women from the card.
During a time when a WrestleMania main event headlined by female talent looks more probable than ever, it's somewhat mystifying that the company would choose to completely undermine their so-called 'evolution' by hosting a major event in a country where the women's roster are not even permitted to compete.
But money talks, and a government-funded project of global soft-diplomacy is apparently worth more to WWE than what is, it seems, a quite transparent PR exercise designed to capitalise on a social movement.
Call us cynics.
To his credit, Paul 'Triple H' Levesque has at least stepped forth to address the understandable concern surrounding the gender discrimination inherent in hosting such a show. Speaking with The Independent, Trips acknowledged complaints, but noted that "every culture is different and just because you don't agree with a certain aspect of it, doesn't mean it's not relevant."
WWE's Executive VP went on: "You can't dictate to a country or a religion about how they handle things, but, having said that, WWE is at the forefront of a women's evolution in the world and what you can't do is affect change anywhere by staying away from it.
"While right now, women are not competing at the event, we have had discussions about that and we believe and hope that, in the next few years they will be. That is a significant cultural shift in Saudi Arabia."
It's very difficult to argue with anything The Game says, and he is absolutely right: it's not necessarily our place to judge the relative merits of other cultures from without. However, it's still not entirely clear why Vince and co. did not wait for the 'cultural shift' to transpire before getting into bed with their Saudi partners (incidentally, something else outlawed in the Kingdom). What's that? How many million dollars? Oh.