WWE's Next Saudi Arabia Show Revealed, Bringing Back Popular Tournaments

PLE is taking place in a Kingdom, so the theme of this show is appropriate.

by Scott Carlson
King & Queen Of The Ring
WWE

WWE will be returning to Saudi Arabia for yet another PLE, but it will also have a pretty popular and recognizable gimmick attached to the event.

This latest Saudi show will be dubbed The King and Queen of the Ring, bringing back the royalty-themed tourneys for the first time since October 2021. The King and Queen of the Ring will take place May 27.

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The event carries the tagline, "It's all happening in Jeddah." That would seem to imply that the entire tournaments would be taking place at the PLE, which is a departure from the last time WWE crowned royalty in October 2021. That tournament interestingly also concluded in Saudi Arabia at Crown Jewel, with Xavier Woods winning the King of the Ring and Zelina Vega capturing the inaugural Queen's Crown.

Once upon a time, the King of the Ring was seen as a launching pad for mid-card WWE wrestlers, as it would give them a prestigious title and set them up for a big push afterward. The likes of Bret Hart, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Triple H, Edge, Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar all won the KOTR before capturing a world title.

But lately, the tournament winners have simply adopted a royalty-themed gimmick and not advanced much in their position on the card. In some cases, the KOTR winners have actually gone on losing streaks and seen their stock drop. Sheamus, Wade Barrett, Baron Corbin and Xavier Woods all have changed their personae to reflect being kings, while Vega did the same as Queen Zelina.

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Presumably, we'll learn in the coming weeks after WrestleMania 39 whether the entire tournaments, the semifinals and finals, or just the finals will take place at the PLE. Given there are two tourneys, odds are we'd see the qualifying and/or quarterfinal matches contested on Raw and SmackDown and the semis and finals for each (six matches in total) at King and Queen of the Ring.

One request though: Can we please ditch the crown-and-scepter gimmick afterward and just actually, you know, push the winners?

Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.