WWE Crown Jewel Booed Loudly, World Cup Brackets Note, Kickoff Show Confirmed
Above is a new video for the WWE Crown Jewel event, which takes place on Friday, November 2 from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The promo premiered during Sunday's WWE Evolution pay-per-view. Fans in the arena could be heard booing Crown Jewel when Michael Cole was going over the event. It's worth noting that WWE still did not mention Saudi Arabia by name during Evolution.
It's also worth noting that WWE's Events page for Crown Jewel now has the location listed – King Saud University Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Until WWE confirmed Crown Jewel for the Kingdom during Thursday's Q3 earnings report, the location box was still left blank on the WWE.com Events page listing.
WWE has confirmed that there will be a Kickoff pre-show for Crown Jewel on Friday. It will air on the WWE Network at 11am EST. The Network broadcast of the Crown Jewel main card is scheduled to begin at 12pm ET and run until 4pm ET. The event will begin at 6:30pm local time in Riyadh.
In regards to John Cena's status for the WWE World Cup tournament at Crown Jewel, it's been reported by multiple sources that Cena informed the company he would not be attending and word late last week was that he had not changed his mind. It's interesting that WWE's Events page still has Cena listed for Crown Jewel and he is still featured front & center in promotional material for the tournament.
WWE has announced that they will reveal the brackets for the World Cup tournament on this week's RAW and SmackDown. We should know then if Cena has been removed from the tournament.
Crown Jewel tickets went on sale on Saturday morning and reportedly sold out in less than 3 hours. The King Saud University Stadium holds around 25,000 seats.
We will have live coverage of Crown Jewel on Friday as the event happens. Below is the current card:
Vacant WWE Universal Title Match
Brock Lesnar vs. Braun Strowman
WWE Title Match
Daniel Bryan vs. AJ Styles
SmackDown Tag Team Title Match
The New Day vs. The Bar with Big Show
WWE World Cup: One-Night Eight-Man Tournament
RAW: John Cena, WWE Hall of Famer Kurt Angle, WWE Intercontinental & RAW Tag Team Champion Seth Rollins, Dolph Ziggler
SmackDown: Randy Orton, Jeff Hardy, Rey Mysterio, The Miz
DX (Triple H and WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels) vs. The Brothers of Destruction (The Undertaker and Kane)