WWE executive Bruce Prichard recently visited Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the Royal Rumble. During his stay, he dealt with several misconceptions about the location before experiencing a series of unusual events at his hotel. Prichard noted on his Something to Wrestle With podcast that while the people were nice, a simple request to fix his air conditioning turned into a crowded situation in his room.
“You know, [I] recently visited the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Riyad, to be exact. And you know, a lot of misconceptions about what it’s like. You know, you get there and places is lot of desert man, lot of sand, but you know, when you get in the city, you could be in any city anywhere in the world, but the people are so damn nice. It’s kind of hard to get mad at them because they try, they bend over backwards to do whatever it is that they can do for you. I took Ubers while in Riyadh, went to go get my nails done, took us to a spa, dropped us off, and we went in. And as soon as we went in, they don’t know, no men, women only. What the hell? Then we realized, oh, okay, man, we probably should have checked, you know, customs and everything. And so we get another Uber. Now, the Uber drivers that we had for this particular part of it, didn’t speak a lot of English, but man tried and took out their translator and got everything, got us where we wanted to go quickly and safely. It was all good. Ended up getting manny petty. They ended up coming to my hotel and give me a manny petty out on the terrace. Beautiful day. It actually rained that day, believe it or not. So I was there for four days. And after the first day, I thought, you know, man I was cold. I was cold. Everything was cold. And I got in my room, but my room wasn’t cold. My room was kind of perfect on the first day, and then the next day I noticed, I thought, Wow, this kind of warm. I’m going to lower the temperature some. So I lower the temperature, but temperature doesn’t lower. As a matter of fact, the temperature goes up. So I’m trying to figure this thing out. I can’t figure out. Finally, I’ve had enough. It’s getting late at night. I know I’m not going to sleep if I don’t have a cool room. And I called out. I said, Hey, could you ask somebody to come up here and take a look at my air conditioner to see if they could possibly make it get cooler? A delightful gentleman came in, came up, and he said, You know, I need to get into your bathroom because I’ve got to go up into the ceiling to get to the mechanism on the air conditioner. I said, Sure, man, go ahead. So I’m sitting over at the desk. I’m sitting at my desk, I’m on the computer, I’m doing my work and all this stuff, and time’s gone by. I’ve already taken my nighttime medicine, so I’m getting a little tired, and I hear [noises], and then that was followed by a telephone ringing, and that telephone rang and rang and rang, and I’m sitting there, and I’m wearin,g I said, God man, come on, dude, answer your phone, shit. And I noticed, like, the doors open to close a few times, and I’m just over there minding my own business, working. And then I get up because I’d had my diet Pepsi thing there and a piece of fruit, and want to go wash my hands. I go into the bathroom. Now, there’s four people in my bathroom. I don’t know how they all got in there, maybe through the wall, I don’t know, but they’re all in there. They’re working and they’re talking, but only one of them speaks a little bit of English. And then the guy comes out and tries to explain to me what happened? He says, wait, wait, wait, I must get the general manager up here. So the general manager comes up, and I admit, upon arrival, a really nice guy and another interpreter. And they stand there. Let’s pretend this is a wall right here.”
The repairman had dropped his phone into the wall while trying to record the repair process. Prichard had to listen to the device ringing inside the wall for several minutes before hotel staff moved him to a new room. He noted that they insisted on packing his belongings for him rather than letting him do it himself.
“He goes, his phone is right here, and it’s ringing, really, oh, what are we going to do about that? He goes, No, no, his phone is in the wall, right here. I said, I get what you’re saying, but what are we going to do about that? Now there’s six of them, and they go, Well, we we can’t get it out. this f**ker’s phone is ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing, and I’m like, Okay, what are we gonna do to get me out now, I’ve got 10 days worth of clothes already hung up, because I’ve been in the room for two days. I expect to be there for another four or five days, and I’ve got everything hung, I’ve got everything exactly like I want everything in its place, and so on and so forth. And the guy finally tells me, no, we’ll get your room. But the guy was now, I guess, full thing. He’s looking down with his phone and he’s trying to record what’s going on down there. And he dropped his phone in the wall, and they left. And for the next 15 minutes, while I’m sitting there, all I’m hearing is this goddamn phone ring in the wall, and I’m screaming at him to say, Hey, man, call your people, whoever the fuck is calling you. I know you must know who’s calling you, because I know. And they finally got me to another room, but they wouldn’t let me pack. They insisted on packing all my stuff for me, and it was just such a wonderful, delightful experience that I had to share it. And I just was amazed, because I’d never had anyone drop their phone into a wall. And my solution was different. My solution was to poke a hole in the wall, get his phone out, fix my air conditioner, and go home. But they didn’t do that. That translation didn’t make its way through. But a delightful place, beautiful, absolutely beautiful, brand new hotel and all that good stuff, but it was, I bet you that phone is still there.
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Something To Wrestle with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. You can listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform or watch it on the Something To Wrestle YouTube channel.
