It was rumored for the past week that Daniel Bryan had refused to make the trip to Saudi Arabia for WWE Crown Jewel. These rumors turned out to be true as WWE moved the WWE Championship match between Bryan and AJ Styles from Crown Jewel to Smackdown Live. Styles retained the Title via submission.
Dave Meltzer provided some more details in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscribe here).
According to Meltzer, Bryan felt like he couldn’t go back to the country after participating in the Greatest Royal Rumble event back in April.
Two key reasons were Bryan learning about the countries treatment of homosexuals and also that they didn’t allow Sami Zayn to perform on the show. He was said to have known very little about Saudi Arabia prior to wrestling at the event in April.
Meltzer says that Bryan actually requested to lose to the Miz at WWE Super Show-Down. Bryan ended up winning in two minutes to become the number one contender for the WWE Championship. It is unclear though if Bryan requested to lose because he didn’t want that to be his blowoff match to end his feud with the Miz or if he knew the Title shot was coming in Saudi Arabia.
Bryan eventually told Vince McMahon that he wasn’t going to Saudi Arabia. The two agreed to keep it a secret, with very few people in the company knowing. There were ideas to potentially film the match elsewhere and air it on the WWE Network for fans during the event. WWE eventually made the call to do the Title match on Smackdown instead.
On a related note, here are our 7 booking steps for the WWE World Cup tournament.