Kemo
11-06-2019, 08:32 PM
On the latest episode of WWE’s After The Bell podcast, Corey Graves spoke in-depth around the travel nightmare that unfolded after last week’s Crown Jewel event from Saudi Arabia.
Graves opened the show addressing the “elephant in the room” and aimed to clarify what he dubbed as “conspiracy theories” fueled by online wrestling news outlets. He prefaced his rant by saying that he’s read the online rumors and is not here to tow the company line. He experienced it all first hand and wants to set the record straight.
Overall, his experiences with WWE in Saudi Arabia have been awesome. The travel is usually easy and fun. He had reservations before the first Saudi trip, but the people over there have been nothing but gracious. The service, the food, everything has been high class and enjoyable. The Crown Jewel show was awesome and surpassed his expectations. The elephant in the room is the “travel snafu” after the event, as they are calling it internally.
“It was weird,” Graves said. “It was definitely unusual.” There were a litany of delay and nobody could get a straight answer about what was causing the delays. They heard about 10-15 different reasons as to why thee plane wouldn’t take off. Everyone was exhausted and just wanted to get back to the States.
The WWE crew boarded the plane to leave and got in their seats ready to take off. The flight crew came around took everyone’s food orders. Soon thereafter, there was some confusion involving the pilots, who were going in and out of the cockpit. He heard about some sort of mechanical issue. They shut the plane down and restarted it. They were later told the plane would not be taking off and everyone deplaned.
At this time, WWE and Fox executives began scrambling to figure out how to salvage Friday’s SmackDown broadcast. A select group of people were chosen to board a separate charter plane and fly back to the United States while everyone else stayed in Saudi Arabia. There were reports that VIP talent got the preferential treatment, but Graves says this is completely untrue.
Certain people like Vince McMahon, Brock Lesnar, Tyson Fury, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair made their own arrangements to leave the country. More on that below. However, the WWE crew that flew out early on a separate flight, they were not getting preferential treatment. The goal of WWE and Fox was to present SmackDown as advertised to the best of their abilities. As a result, the wrestlers who were advertised for that show got on the first big flight out. This had nothing to do with who was the ‘most important’ or the biggest star.
Graves addressed the rumor that “Mr. McMahon abandoned everyone in Saudi Arabia.” Graves said this is a completely twisted narrative. Every week, as soon as the final bell rings at WWE television, Vince gets on his jet and goes to the next city. That’s because he is busy running WWE. He understands it is a sexy headline to say, “Vince left everyone” but that’s just how it works.
He acknowledges, “It sucked.” Talent was pissed. But there’s no conspiracies at work here. Graves then said, half of the rumors came from the “boys” who were on the plane and blasted the WWE talent that was tweeting about their frustrations.
“If you are that insecure and you feel so strongly that you’re going to get on Twitter and complain, because our flight got screwed up for whatever reason would be, what’s Twitter going to do?” Graves asked. “All of it is fuel for these ‘journalists’ so to speak, then everyone gets on the Internet and puts their two cents in and starts coming up with their conspiracy theories, and if you’re mad because your flight got delayed and you weren’t important enough to get on the jet, that’s on you. Crying about it on Twitter.”
Graves continued, “You’re a WWE Superstar. This happens. This is part of our life. We all have travel woes. We all have travel issues. You know who wasn’t complaining? Randy freakin’ Orton. If anybody has the cache and the right to speak his mind and raise hell it would be Randy Orton. He’s got a bit of a reputation for doing that. But Randy got it. It wasn’t because any of us that were on that smaller charter were more important than anyone else. It was about doing the damn show. It was about being a professional. Delivering what’s advertised. It was the company and the network trying to decide how we can make the show as close to whole as possible.”
He added that there’s nothing he can do about conspiracy theories out there, but he was there and how everything actually unfolded.
Graves opened the show addressing the “elephant in the room” and aimed to clarify what he dubbed as “conspiracy theories” fueled by online wrestling news outlets. He prefaced his rant by saying that he’s read the online rumors and is not here to tow the company line. He experienced it all first hand and wants to set the record straight.
Overall, his experiences with WWE in Saudi Arabia have been awesome. The travel is usually easy and fun. He had reservations before the first Saudi trip, but the people over there have been nothing but gracious. The service, the food, everything has been high class and enjoyable. The Crown Jewel show was awesome and surpassed his expectations. The elephant in the room is the “travel snafu” after the event, as they are calling it internally.
“It was weird,” Graves said. “It was definitely unusual.” There were a litany of delay and nobody could get a straight answer about what was causing the delays. They heard about 10-15 different reasons as to why thee plane wouldn’t take off. Everyone was exhausted and just wanted to get back to the States.
The WWE crew boarded the plane to leave and got in their seats ready to take off. The flight crew came around took everyone’s food orders. Soon thereafter, there was some confusion involving the pilots, who were going in and out of the cockpit. He heard about some sort of mechanical issue. They shut the plane down and restarted it. They were later told the plane would not be taking off and everyone deplaned.
At this time, WWE and Fox executives began scrambling to figure out how to salvage Friday’s SmackDown broadcast. A select group of people were chosen to board a separate charter plane and fly back to the United States while everyone else stayed in Saudi Arabia. There were reports that VIP talent got the preferential treatment, but Graves says this is completely untrue.
Certain people like Vince McMahon, Brock Lesnar, Tyson Fury, Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair made their own arrangements to leave the country. More on that below. However, the WWE crew that flew out early on a separate flight, they were not getting preferential treatment. The goal of WWE and Fox was to present SmackDown as advertised to the best of their abilities. As a result, the wrestlers who were advertised for that show got on the first big flight out. This had nothing to do with who was the ‘most important’ or the biggest star.
Graves addressed the rumor that “Mr. McMahon abandoned everyone in Saudi Arabia.” Graves said this is a completely twisted narrative. Every week, as soon as the final bell rings at WWE television, Vince gets on his jet and goes to the next city. That’s because he is busy running WWE. He understands it is a sexy headline to say, “Vince left everyone” but that’s just how it works.
He acknowledges, “It sucked.” Talent was pissed. But there’s no conspiracies at work here. Graves then said, half of the rumors came from the “boys” who were on the plane and blasted the WWE talent that was tweeting about their frustrations.
“If you are that insecure and you feel so strongly that you’re going to get on Twitter and complain, because our flight got screwed up for whatever reason would be, what’s Twitter going to do?” Graves asked. “All of it is fuel for these ‘journalists’ so to speak, then everyone gets on the Internet and puts their two cents in and starts coming up with their conspiracy theories, and if you’re mad because your flight got delayed and you weren’t important enough to get on the jet, that’s on you. Crying about it on Twitter.”
Graves continued, “You’re a WWE Superstar. This happens. This is part of our life. We all have travel woes. We all have travel issues. You know who wasn’t complaining? Randy freakin’ Orton. If anybody has the cache and the right to speak his mind and raise hell it would be Randy Orton. He’s got a bit of a reputation for doing that. But Randy got it. It wasn’t because any of us that were on that smaller charter were more important than anyone else. It was about doing the damn show. It was about being a professional. Delivering what’s advertised. It was the company and the network trying to decide how we can make the show as close to whole as possible.”
He added that there’s nothing he can do about conspiracy theories out there, but he was there and how everything actually unfolded.