WWE women sidelined again
Female performers absent from event in Saudi Arabia
STAMFORD — The fans who filled the approximately 60,000-seat King Abdullah Sports City Stadium in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Friday confirmed WWE’s growing popularity in the Persian Gulf. But the robust turnout did not answer when its women stars would compete in the country.
None of WWE’s female performers participated at Super ShowDown, just as they were sidelined for the company’s two previous events in Saudi Arabia — absences that contrast with their growing prominence in the ring in the U.S. The decision has rankled a number of fans and observers of the company, while WWE officials maintain that they want to include women in future shows in the ultraconservative Middle Eastern country.
“We’ve been promised we will be part of the cultural shift and change in Saudi Arabia, and we are very proud to be a part of that shift and change,” Stephanie McMahon, WWE’s chief brand officer, said in an interview Friday at WWE’s headquarters, 1241 E. Main St.
Absent in Saudi Arabia, more prominent in U.S.
The all-male lineup Friday — which featured showdowns between The Undertaker and Goldberg, Paul “Triple H” Levesque and Randy Orton and a 50-Man Battle Royal — came as no surprise.
No women featured at the Crown Jewel gathering last November, in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, nor in the first event in Jeddah, the April 2018 Greatest Royal Rumble.
Those three shows kicked off a 10-year partnership between WWE and the Saudi
government.
The ensuing absence of women in the Saudi rings — which has sparked ongoing complaints on social media — reflects an exceptionally restrictive society.
Saudi officials have relaxed some of those strictures, including a ban on female drivers that was lifted last year. But the move reportedly coincided with a crackdown on activists who lobbied to eliminate the prohibition.
“I understand that people are questioning it (the lack of women), but you have to understand that every culture is different and just because you don’t agree with a certain aspect of it, it doesn’t mean it’s not relevant culture,” Levesque, who is an WWE executive vice president and Stephanie McMahon’s husband, said in an April 2018 interview with the British newspaper The Independent.
Levesque said that WWE officials wanted women to compete in Saudi Arabia within the next few years.
Although they did not compete at Super ShowDown, WWE Superstars Natalya and Alexa Bliss traveled to Jeddah. Natalya tweeted pictures of her and Bliss’ visit Friday, with several male Superstars, to a children’s hospital in the city on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast.
A WWE spokesman told Hearst Connecticut Media that the company expects women to compete “in the near future” in Saudi Arabia, but declined to comment on whether it had planned, at any point, for Natalya and Alexa to participate in Super ShowDown.
Bliss competed against Sasha Banks in a Raw title match in December 2017 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Their showdown marked the first time women Superstars had competed in the UAE.
While women have not participated in the Saudi events, they have gained increasingly visible roles in WWE’s U.S. events in the past few years.
At WrestleMania last April, Becky Lynch won the gathering’s first women’s main event, in a triplethreat contest also featuring Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey.
“I would like to be able to compete in Saudi Arabia,” Lynch said in an interview Friday at the WWE headquarters, which she visited for a Special Olympics rally . “If we can help move the needle in the right direction, to where we’re getting equal rights for women, then if I can help in any sort of way, then I would love to be a part.”
Last October, WWE held its first all-women pay-per-view event, featuring more than 50 in championship matches at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, N.Y. Six months earlier, the 2018 WrestleMania hosted the first women’s Battle Royal match.
A 2015 social media campaign — known by its hashtag #GiveDivasAChance — sparked the push for gender parity and less stereotyped roles among WWE’s performers.
Other questions
Among the male superstars who did not travel to Jeddah, Kevin Owens instead participated in the Special Olympics gathering.
In an interview, Owens cited a recent five-month layoff after knee surgery. But he said “no, it’s not” the reason that he missed Super ShowDown. He declined to comment further on why he did not participate at Super ShowDown, after featuring at Greatest Royal Rumble.
At Crown Jewel, WWE also faced key absences, including non-appearances from John Cena and Daniel Bryan. Varying accounts circulated about their noshows.
Crown Jewel was overshadowed by the furor over the suspected murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
“Ultimately, the WWE is about making money,” said Daniel Durbin, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Sports, Media and Society. “On the one side, I don’t know how much they are considering the long-term impact (of the Saudi events) on their brand. On the other, over time, this will negatively impact their brand. But the audience for WWE isn’t necessarily the most politically aware audience.”
WWE officials maintain that they have fully considered the impact of the Saudi programming, which has been carried on the subscription-based WWE Network. The company has not released viewership statistics for the Saudi series, whose next gathering has not yet been announced.
“To have the opportunity to go and actually put on large-scale stadium events ... for our fans in the Middle East, it only furthers that engagement and connection with our fan base,” McMahon said. “That’s what we want to do all over the world.”