Infamous WWE plane incident in Saudi Arabia led to wrestlers fearing for their lives if they spoke about it ...Middle East

WWE fans will be forgiven for being concerned over Night of Champions after the infamous prior experiences in Saudi Arabia.

This weekend’s show in Riyadh has been under the spotlight following a series of international incidents in the region.

In the wake of military action taken by Iran and the US, disruption to travel and airspace across the Middle East has been caused.

However, WWE, which was the first major sporting promotion to hold a global event in Saudi Arabia, are still returning to the Kingdom.

It puts the wrestling giants under tremendous pressure to avoid their wrestlers experiencing any scenes akin to the 2019 ordeal.

12 months after agreeing to a 10-year strategic partnership with the country’s Ministry of Sport, WWE staged Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia.

The card took place on a Thursday, with several key stars due back in New York the following night for Friday Night SmackDown.

But a surprise WWE statement was released hours beforehand that claimed a flight issue had grounded hundreds of key staff in Riyadh.

It read: “More than 175 Superstars, production crew and employees boarded a 747 charter flight back to the United States on Thursday.

“After the door closed, due to several aircraft problems, including mechanical issues, all passengers sat on the tarmac for more than six hours.”

Numerous conspiracy theories soon emanated among fans over whether mechanical issues were a smokescreen for something else.

Former WWE Spanish commentator Hugo Savinovich fuelled the unease by claiming Prince Mohammad Bin Salman held up the WWE-chartered flight in retaliation for Vince McMahon cutting Saudi Arabia’s live television feed to Crown Jewel – an accusation the company denied to Forbes.

In the weeks that followed, AJ Styles was among the wrestlers who moved to alleviate concerns over what had transpired.

Speaking on his Mixer gaming stream, Styles said: “Were there guns? Were there people yelling ‘EVERYBODY OFF THE PLANE!’? No, that never happened.

“My wife called me in a panic, she’s scared to death. I go, ‘Babe, listen, we’re just not able to go anywhere. It is not a big issue, nobody has threatened to kill us.’ There was none of that going on.

“Nobody was going to get murdered; it never happened. There was no threat of physical harm or anything like that.”

Two years later, the first in-depth account of what WWE stars on the plane endured was released, which painted a clearer picture.

Levi Cooper, aka Tucker, told The Wrestling Inc. Daily in 2021: “I was there. I was part of it. It was wild. I wasn’t scared.

“I like to think I’m a fairly logical person. Even if they are messing with us, to some extent, they’re only gonna mess with us up to the point where it doesn’t become an international thing.

“They might want to mess with the company, but they’re not trying to mess with America, and they don’t want it to be like, hey, the Saudi government didn’t let a bunch of wrestlers go home.

“They don’t want that story, in my opinion, anyway. That’s how I was feeling about it at the time. We leave the show, and we go to what is the executive hangar, where it’s not a public place.

“It’s like a private charter area, and I don’t know how long we sat there, eight hours, maybe. We got on the plane once, and then we had to get back off of it because they wouldn’t let the plane go.

“We were on the plane for two hours, and we got back off. Then we had to wait in the lobby for another hour and a half or so because they had to get the buses, and then obviously, there’s the logistics of trying to find a hotel now for however many people we have on the trip, 100 plus or whatever. We then stayed for however long, maybe 12 hours, 15 hours in the hotel.

“And then we head back, and I remember it being kind of sketchy because we went back, and we got off, and when we got on the plane and back off of it. Both of the times, you walked out onto the tarmac, and you basically walked right onto the plane.

“The plane was right there. You didn’t have to get on anything or nothing. The time we’re going home, I guess they moved the plane or something, because it had to stay overnight.

“They didn’t tell anybody anything about that. We get through security and everything, and then we have to get on these big people movers, essentially, like trams, just stand-up airplane trams.

“They take off, and we start driving. We’ve been driving for maybe five minutes. There’s nothing else around. We’re driving over to wherever the plane is, which is on the outskirts of the main airport, and we’re off in the executive area.

“So now all of us are driving through the middle of the desert. ‘What is happening, dude? Why are we driving through the middle of the desert in all these people movers by themselves?’ We just ended up going to the plane and getting on the plane, but I remember for 10 minutes, everyone was like, ‘What is happening here?’ My wife was not pleased.”

Cooper added: “I don’t know that anybody will ever know the truth of the matter. Anyone who knows about the story I’m sure knows about the reports.

“To some extent, I think we were political pawns a little bit in some regards.

“That’s at least what it seems like to me, and that definitely would make me think twice, I guess, about going back to Saudi Arabia.”

AEW star Dax Harwood, who was on that WWE card, admitted he was just as scared of the problems following him to America.

He wrote on X in 2023: “Honeslty (sic), I was afraid if I told the truth about what happened, I would’ve been found dead somewhere in my house.”

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