Update On Lawsuits Against WWE Over Saudi Arabia Deal: Two Secret Witnesses Including Wrestler, New Lawsuit Over TV Deal

As we previously reported, several class action lawsuits were filed against the WWE back in April, with some pertaining to the WWE’s TV deal with Saudi Arabia. Specifically, it was claimed that WWE made “materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failing to disclose” that they perpetrated a fraudulent scheme. The tensions between WWE and Saudi Arabia were brought up, including the flight leaving the country last year that was delayed.

Meanwhile, the latest Wrestling Observer Radio, it was revealed that there are now two ‘secret’ witnesses as it pertains to what was going on in Saudi Arabia and one of them is a former wrestler that competed at Crown Jewel on October 31, 2019. The wrestler confirmed “everything that was reported that all these other people reported didn’t happen.”

The wrestler stated that after the event, he and other WWE personnel were set to leave the King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh and take a private charter plane to Buffalo for Smackdown. He was told that the charter flight was delayed because ‘the plane needed to be pulled around.’ After everyone boarded, they were then removed from the plane. After 20-30 minutes, the wrestler said he spoke with a stewardess who said, “It seems someone doesn’t want us to leave this country.” He added that the pilot seemed ‘very distressed’ when he told everyone the flight couldn’t take off. He said they were told it was because of a malfunction, but he claims he saw ‘a ton of guards wearing black militia attire and wearing guns that were blocking the exit of the wrestlers.’

There had been rumors that this was one of the story, but the official reason given on that was a mechanical error with the plane. The wrestler claimed that after seeing the guards he believed something was wrong, and other passengers had described the ordeal as a ‘hostage situation’. He said he asked senior director of talent relations Mark Carrano what was happening, who told him that Vince McMahon and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman had argued over late payments over the June 7, 2019 Super Showdown event. Carrano told the wrestler that McMahon cut the live feed for Crown Jewel and the Crown Prince was ‘very mad.’ He said that he and other wrestler looked into getting flights on their own from a different airport to leave the next morning, and that he and 10-12 other wrestlers and commentators got on a flight to Buffalo. The wrestler wondered why there were no other flights available. The wrestlers reportedly communicated back and forth and on the withheld plane, the other wrestlers claimed that military police were holding them because McMahon didn’t air the first 30 minutes of the PPV. He said that wives were ‘very concerned’ on social media and when the wrestlers got back they had said they were grateful to be home.

The wrestler also said that after everyone was back safely, WWE sent out a letter that tried to remove all blame from themselves. He said that many wrestlers were afraid to speak out due to the limited job opportunities in the industry with the pay that WWE offered. He said some of them did speak anonymously with the press but WWE called the reports ‘conspiracies’ and ‘laughable’. The wrestler said that he and a co-worker then went to talent relations and said they wouldn’t go back to Saudi Arabia. Other wrestlers also tried this but WWE threatened their careers if they didn’t. There had been social media posts at the time with wrestlers expressing frustration with being held in the country while other, more prominent wrestlers got to leave.

The wrestlers who performed at Crown Jewel but are no longer with WWE include Heath Slater, Eric Young, Sin Cara, No Way Jose, Brodie Lee, Curt Hawkins, Zack Ryder, Curtis Axel, Dax Harwood, Cash Wheeler, Luke Gallows, Karl Anderson, Erick Rowan and Cain Velasquez.

There is also a new lawsuit in which an employee of MBC (Middle-east Broadcasting Center), which was negotiating with WWE for the deal with Saudi Arabia, stated that WWE couldn’t agree on ‘basic assumptions of a proposed deal’. He claimed he worked out a feasibility study when he joined MBC last fall, which came before his hiring on a possible relationship between MBC and WWE. The employee stated that WWE ‘had wildly unreasonable expectations of the revenue’ from a potential broadcast partner. They proposed an $80 million dollar licensing fee and a projection of over 100 million over-the-top subscribers for all television in the region. This was based on the large number of OSN subscribers that watched WWE. The witness said this was ‘optimistic’. He said that he found there would be 6.5 million at the most, which WWE rejected, so he raised the estimate to 10 million “to be nice to them”, then fifteen million to make WWE happy, not because they were realistic. WWE then reduced its licensing fee to $50 million and MBC felt it couldn’t go above $14.5 million, so negotiations ended due to the difference in numbers.

Since WWE had been claiming they were close to a deal and the witness says they weren’t, that hurts their defense.