WrestleMania Is Officially Headed To Saudi Arabia
And the crowd goes mild.
After pulling next year's WrestleMania 42 from the already-announced city of New Orleans at the last minute this year, only to return back to Las Vegas for the opportunity to make more money, the WWE is taking WrestleMania international for the very first time in 2027. It won't be in London, or Toronto, or any other city that's been in the hunt for many years, however.
WrestleMania 43 will be held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (for what I'm sure is a hefty fee) - and fans are not happy about this one bit....
It isn't hard to see why they're doing this, considering the WWE has made more money putting on 13 shows in Saudi Arabia than they have putting on 41 WrestleManias....
….but it doesn't make it any less disappointing.
For me, putting aside all of the reasons going to Saudi Arabia under this context in general is gross - I also think this strips WrestleMania weekend of everything that makes it special. No indie companies are going to Saudi to run shows around that weekend, wrestling fans aren't going to travel in droves and take over a city the way they always have, the shows during the week are all going to be during the daytime over here due to the time difference - it just sucks. I'm sure it'll be great for the people of Saudi Arabia, but it strips virtually all of my excitement over the event away personally, which is extremely tough to do. WrestleMania is like Christmas to me. It's my favorite day of the year. I haven't missed one in 22 years. But a Saudi WrestleMania just feels like a non-canon event we have to get past so we can go back to "real" WrestleMania. It almost feels like the COVID Mania already to me, and it hasn't even happened yet! We're still over a year out!
Early rumors suggest they're going to unload the BRINKS truck for The Rock to main event against either Cody Rhodes or Roman Reigns, and possibly even make offers to "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, and other legends to come out of retirement - and that may be exciting on paper, but let me remind everyone how the last couple legends matches in Saudi went….
Oh well. Hopefully this doesn't become the permanent home of WrestleMania, and we're back to New Orleans in 2028.
P.S. This report that the WWE was trying to put on "WrestleMania branded" events and the government of Saudi Arabia made it very clear they want the real thing is pretty funny….
They tried to sneak some fake WrestleManias by the government and got caught! At least they tried I guess!