The official announcement from WWE that 2027’s WrestleMania 43 would take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia drew a predictable reaction online. There‘s positive and negative responses, the quantity and volume of which depends on your news outlets of choice and/or the echo chamber social media algorithms have helped create for you. But it was pretty impossible to avoid at least some criticism, with even some WWE superfans greeting the news from Triple H and Turki Al-Sheikh with an “ugh”.
But there’s always a question of whether what happens on the internet will translate to the real world. We’ve seen it go both ways in the wrestling sphere. Some hashtags lead to in-arena revolts, which can result in noticeable change. Others never carry over with anything more than a few signs in a sold-out building.
At least for one night, with one audience, WWE heard from flesh-and-blood humans who don’t like the decision to take its biggest event to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When a hype video for the WrestleMania 43 news played during Worlds Collide last night (Sept. 12) at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, videos and recordings of fans booing the announcement and chanting “You Sold Out” circulated:
The chants and jeers could be heard on the live YouTube stream of the show (in addition to clips like the one below, at the 1:00:00 mark of the full official video you can find here, and on WWE’s channel):
That’s just one show, when the outrage is fresh. Will it continue? Does WWE care when they’ll allegedly receive nine-figures for the show, as part of a deal worth several times that amount in the long-term?
We’ll find out in the weeks and months to come.
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