What REALLY Happened To WWE In Saudi Arabia?

Initial reports began to filter out of Saudi Arabia that WWE's return flight had been delayed. The reasons for this weren't yet known but the bulk of the 170+ party of talent, staff and crew were sat on the tarmac at Riyadh with no clear indication of when they'd be able to leave. Vince McMahon had departed on his own private plane, so to had Brock Lesnar, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and Tyson Fury, but everyone else remained.

With talk of "mechanical problems" beginning to make their way around social media, around 20 people from the plane managed to board a separate airliner bound for New York's JFC Airport. Onboard were 20 members of the WWE party, with around 12 of them being "talent", this plane, sadly, did not make it in time for the SmackDown broadcast.

With that plane in the air and the original flight still stuck on the runway, several of those left behind began taking to Twitter to vent their frustrations. What followed was several hours of hearsay, misinformation, rumour and speculation that would have entirely dominated the wrestling agenda had NXT's invasion of SmackDown not been such a resounding success. Only in the aftermath of that did questions start getting asked about precisely what had happened.

It started with Jim Valley on the Wrestling Observer disputing the "mechanical problem" story by reporting that "It wasn't a plane or weather issue" that had prevented the flight from departing. Then, Sean Ross Sapp suggested talk amongst those in Saudi Arabia was of a different tack entirely; "There were rumors among talent that Vince McMahon got in some kind of disagreement in Saudi Arabia, though I haven't been able to fully confirm that".

This is where the H word comes into play. Karl Anderson tweeted (in jest) that you "Couldn’t pay me enough to go back... Well that’s not true, I need a second pool, so...". To which his wife Tini replied "2nd house!! Not a pool..but don’t ever go back AGAIN! We don’t need our daddy / papi / motherlover / absanderson / besttagteam etc. being held hostage while we’re at home worried to death".

While there was never any suggestion that WWE's employees were in any danger, the term "hostage" began getting thrown around. The implication being that rather than the plane being unable to leave it was actually being prevented from doing so as part of some on running dispute between WWE (read; Vince) and the SGSA. Meltzer then reporting that a number of stars felt like they were being used as "pawns in a dick waving contest".