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WWE Crown Jewel Plane Incident In Saudi Arabia
Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson pulled back the curtain, and spoke in detail about their time in WWE during the Talk’N Shop Podcast.
The show was hosted by Ryan Satin, and also featured Rocky Romero of New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Gallows and Anderson spoke in-depth on their 2019 contract negotiations with WWE, AEW, NJPW, and Impact Wrestling. They also provided details on heat with Paul Heyman, and what happened in Saudi Arabia following WWE Crown Jewel.
Following WWE’s Crown Jewel pay-per-view in Saudi Arabia, the entire crew experienced travel issued returning to the United States.
“Do I think something happened? Do I think they did something to that plane that meant not let us take off at the right time? F*ck yes!”
Karl Anderson said him and the rest of the crew were waiting to board the plane at approximately 11:00 p.m. After about an hour, Vince McMahon, Paul Heyman, and Brock Lesnar walked by and left to to board their private charter to leave. The rest of the crew were scheduled to leave at 1 a.m, but were stuck on the plane for several hours.
At one point the explanation given to him was a worker who worked past his allotted time had to go home.
“You see one of the guys who is translated for us having a heated talk with a Saudi Arabian airport guy. At point it’s 3 a.m! We started asking questions, and somebody said, ‘Well, the only guy who can pull the plane out, he’s been here all day, and he’s already reached his eight hours, and he has to go home’.”
Later, word began to travel that Vince McMahon pulled the plug on the air. This story was given to many media outlets on the time. Vince allegedly demanded the local feed to be pulled. WWE’s current lawsuit with stockholders goes more in-depth on allegations.
“Then you start to hear that you could hear arguments on the headsets from the cameramen during the show, about something that Vince had done, I never heard anything, but you hear that Vince pulled the plug on the air, on the pay-per-view.”
Karl Anderson asked Michael Hayes if they were in a “hostage situation”, which Hayes replied, “I don’t know” before walking away. They were then given the story that the plane had a mechanical issue, and they were taken off the plane. Anderson firmly believes that something weird went down due to politics.
“MPs were surrounding us on the tarmac. There were a couple of situations, where just for a couple of seconds, I was like, ‘F*** man. We’re in n such a corrupt country with such a corrupt government. Who’s to say that they are not going to come in here and start blasting us, for whatever reason?’ So I remember sending a text to my wife, ‘Tell my kids I love them,’ because that’s how hairy it got. But it never got to the depths that people thought that it did.”
Check out the entire clip speaking on their experience following WWE Crown Jewel.