Gunther decided against going to Saudi Arabia for WWE Crown Jewel, and that is why his planned match with “Demon” Finn Balor was never announced, Dave Meltzer reported on the Wrestling Observer website.
Meltzer wrote that angles had already been shot for Gunther vs. Balor, and that multiple WWE sources confirmed Gunther’s decision. One source said the situation “went back-and-forth,” which is why everything on television kept heading in that direction. A poster for Gunther vs. Balor was spotted going up at Riyadh Season Stadium in late October, before the show was moved to The Venue in Riyadh.
There was also talk that Balor was “not thrilled to go either,” according to the report, but the belief internally was that he would have gone if Gunther had.
Several people in the company believed heading into the show that wrestlers could no longer turn down the trip, as some had done in the past. “But evidently that wasn’t the case, at least with someone high up on the shows,” Meltzer wrote.
In the early years of WWE’s Saudi Arabia shows, wrestlers, or at least top talent, were allowed not to go. Over time, while talent was not directly told they had to go, it was made clear that pushes would be lessened, and that champions would have to give up their titles before the event if they turned the shows down. Meltzer reported there had been no recent cases of talent not going, and that the change this year was that “the war going on in Saudi Arabia made talent concerned.”
Gunther vs. Balor was one of two changes to the originally booked show. WWE had also planned a six-man tag team match with Oba Femi, Je’Von Evans and Penta against Bron Breakker, Austin Theory and Bronson Reed. That was changed because of the feeling that it was better to have Femi cause a title change to get him into the angle, and the trios match is expected to happen soon.
Femi and Reed both got involved in the tag team match at Crown Jewel, where Evans and Penta won the World Tag Team Championship from Breakker and Theory. Crown Jewel took place on Saturday, November 7 at The Venue in Riyadh.
