Induction: WWE Crown Jewel – The 2018 Gooker Award Winner
This right here is a goddamn work of art, by which I mean that it was written by a guy named Art. It’s also an amazing piece of writing, so good it makes me jealous. I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s a masterful history and dissection of the absolute stupidest stupid thing that WWE did last year, complete with about a million zingers. I’m not even sure I caught them all on first reading, to be honest. Go read it and then give WrestleCrap your money.
Simply put, WWE Crown Jewel was a bad idea from day one. The event, part of a 10-year, twenty-show deal with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was under fire from the get-go for serving as propaganda for the totalitarian state, its new crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), and his modernization campaign dubbed, “Saudi Vision 2030”.
One can’t discuss Crown Jewel without first talking about May’s Greatest Royal Rumble. Like the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the WWE Network special would be held in Saudi Arabia, albeit it voluntarily this time.