Thread by @TrevorDame

Observer Radio time. CHOO CHOO

Dave starts off by saying that he knows for a fact that the story WWE put out that the talent was trying to book their own charter plane to get to Smackdown in time is bullshit.

Dave says WWE had not been paid for the previous Saudi show, as of September 30th. WWE then reported hours being Crown Jewel that they got an unspecified 60 million dollar payment.

Dave confirms that Crown Jewel was supposed to air live in Saudi Arabia but instead it ending up airing there on a 40 minute delay. Basically sounds like Vince pulled the plug until he and the Saudis came to an agreement, which they did mid-show.

Dave says the talent was told the plane was held up due to mechanical issues. He says in talking to talent, one person there believes that story and pointed out to Dave there were mechanics working on the plane. Everyone else there talking to Dave doesn't buy it.

Dave mentions how the WWE talent flies so much, they know what mechanical issues generally look like. Points out there were military police around, took 24 hours to leave, there was no rerouting. They were supposed to get a flight at 8pm at one point but had to wait til 3am.

Dave calls it a really bad situation and doesn't know what WWE is going to do going forward. He had talent tell him they were never going back to Saudi Arabia, and others saying they couldn't wait TO LEAVE THE COMPANY.

Dave says WWE is trying to get the talent to go on the record to say it was mechanical failures. We'll see what happens.

Dave again reiterates the two major points:

- WWE wasn't paid for the previous Saudi show as of September 30th.

- They got a mysterious 60 million dollar payment a couple hours before Crown Jewel.

Dave says a lot of people weren't happy that Vince got the fuck out of dodge on his plane. Brock and Heyman got out on Brock's jet.

Cain stayed with the rest of the regular crew and just got home today.

Dave says Lesnar and Heyman were not originally scheduled to be on last Friday's Smackdown but they added them because of the rest of the talent being delayed. Says Brock/Heyman jumping to Raw was going to happen next Tuesday as a big kickoff for the new FS1 news show.

Bryan tries to suggest Vince left before he knew all the problems talent would face. Dave says we don't know that. He'd like to believe that, but he just knows a lot of people were mad. One person there told Dave they felt like they were pawns in a dick waving contest.

So the frustration, even if Vince didn't know what was about to happen, would be that he should've suspected there could be reprisals from the Saudi's and he left them out there alone to be subject to them, and then he sent a plane just for the top stars.

Dave finds it impossible to leave that a company doing such big business with SA wouldn't have been able to find another way to get their people out of the country earlier than 24 hours, even if they had to route them to Europe first.

None of the talent was harmed but there was talent there that felt like they were hostages, even though they were allowed to leave.

Dave just keeps saying over and over that it's a really bad, really tense situation. He says the talent needs to unionize, but then points out that Smackdown is a great example of a WWE response if that were to happen: they'd just call up NXT and have a hot show.

Dave says that because of that, he thinks if the WWE guys wanted to unionize, they'd need to get the NXT guys on board. Dave reiterates that he thinks now is the time for WWE guys to seek union representation.