During the latest edition of his Mixer stream, AJ Styles commented on the issues the WWE crew had while in Saudi Arabia. While WWE claimed in a statement that the problems were due to a mechanical issue with the airplane (it doesn’t take 24+ hours to get an airplane fixed and WWE could have easily booked their talents on a commercial flight home or chartered another jet), Styles commented on the reports that it was an issue with Vince McMahon cutting the live feed for Saudi Arabia because of money that the Kingdom still owed WWE from Super Showdown.
Some WWE Superstars say it’s interesting that Vince McMahon, Kevin Dunn and other higher-up WWE officials took off immediately on WWE’s own private jet when they knew there were issues. Some go as far as to say Vince “left them for dead” and to “fend for themselves” in the country. Brock Lesnar and Paul Heyman took their own chartered jet home. The same goes for Tyson Fury, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan and Jimmy Hart. Cain Velazquez actually stayed with the WWE roster.
Anyways, you can check out some highlights from his stream below:
On not being able to leave the country: “We got to the airport, they weren’t letting us board. What was the problem? Not real sure. I heard there was a fuel truck in the way and the guy who drove the fuel truck had left to go home. I know, this makes no sense. Why would he leave if he knows he has a plane that’s leaving? Then there were some paperwork issues. Finally, after 4-5 hours, we get on the plane. Then the ‘fuel something or another’ was broken. People can say, ‘It wasn’t broken.’ But I talked to the pilot and he said, ‘Listen, there was a problem. That’s a real thing.’ The problem was, we spent all that time, from 1 o’clock to 6 or 8 in the morning, waiting to get on the plane and them telling us we can’t go anywhere because the pilots had timed out. The pilots can only go so long before they’re not able to fly because they’re not able to go 24 hours at a time. They had to go to a hotel, we had to find a hotel. Were there guns and people like ‘EVERYBODY OFF THE PLANE!’ No, that never happened. Nobody threatened to kill us. Nobody was gonna get murdered.”
On the Vince McMahon/Saudi Arabia rumors: “I have no idea what happened between Vince and [Mohammad bin Salman]. That’s not my job to say anything. Was I pretty angry about not getting home because I missed my son’s wrestling match? You have no idea. This was out of our hands and out of the pilot’s hands. There’s no point in getting mad about something I have no control of. We’ll find out as we go along why things happened. Or we won’t. I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward. I’ll deal with it when I need to. But I’m not gonna throw WWE under the bus either. It’s not gonna do me any good to throw anybody under the bus. Until I know more, I’m not gonna say anymore or say anything negative. If I did find out and I was offended, I would go to the source.”
(h/t – Fightful.com)
