Report says WWE is paying its female wrestlers for show they couldn’t work in Saudi Arabia

Just last week, Jerry Lawler mentioned on his podcast that he believed WWE was paying its female wrestlers for the Greatest Royal Rumble event, despite the fact they didn’t work the show. That’s because it was held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, of course, and was simply the cost of WWE doing business there.

Now, PW Insider is reporting that is indeed the case, and the women were paid “as if they had worked the show.”

If that seems wildly at odds with the message the company has been promoting about being a leader in what they call the “women’s evolution” in sports and entertainment, well, that’s because it is. This, then, would seem to be a way to ease the pain of the fairly blatant hypocrisy.

And, hey, as a standalone deal, it’s not so bad for the women, assuming the report is accurate — they got to avoid traveling across the world and then all the way back, got an extra day off, and were still paid as if they worked the event.

Then again, that’s the least WWE could do here, all things considered.