CM Punk and Kevin Owens match not included at WWE Crown Jewel

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WWE is set on holding this weekend’s Crown Jewel premium live event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia despite U.S. Embassy warnings against traveling to the area due to ongoing fighting between the Saudis and rebel forces in neighboring of Yemen. Company executives made that decision for financial reasons, and that’s understandably led to criticism — some of which is said to be coming from the WWE roster. Those rumors particularly seemed to focus on Kevin Owens, and to a lesser extent CM Punk. In Punk’s case, that’s probably because he famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) criticized the WWE/Saudi relationship before infamously (or famously, for John Cena and others) walking back his criticism now that he’s one of WWE’s public faces. For Owens, he’s reportedly had issues with WWE’s partnership with the Saudis in the past. And both men have a high-profile match happening on SmackDown this week in Brooklyn instead of in Riyadh. But according to Wrestling Observer Radio’s Dave Meltzer, no talent have refused a Crown Jewel booking. Meltzer claims to have seen early versions of the card for this Saturday’s show, and there haven’t been any significant changes: “There are stories around that some guys refused to go, and nobody refused to go. They think because the Punk match with Owens is on SmackDown that those two guys refused to go, and that is absolutely not true. “I got the original card. The only change is that the tag team title match was gonna be a six-man with Oba, Penta and Je’Von Evans against Bron Breakker, Austin Theory and Bronson Reed. They decided to make it a tag match. I wouldn’t be surprised if Oba and Bronson Reed end up interfering in that tag title match to set up the trios match at a point in the future. I’m not saying for sure that’ll happen. But that is the only change to the card from the card that was originally made a long time ago. So this was always the deal.” “Now, if you have read that there’s talent that doesn’t want to go, of course there is, and that’s obviously accurate. I’ve heard from people too, and [Fightful’s] Sean Sapp reported that the people they’ve talked to say they don’t want to go. Of course they don’t.” That’s in addition last week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which was already covered in our Rumor Roundup last Friday, where Meltzer reported, “one top star in the company told us that, to put it in the nicest of terms, declining to go is something very much not being encouraged.” Not that they’d say much even if they weren’t, but WWE talent may be feeling a little better this week after this past Saturday’s Canelo Álvarez boxing match went down without incident in the same building Crown Jewel will be held in this Saturday. More to come, almost certainly.