6 memorable WWE moments from overseas broadcasts
This Friday, WWE broadcasts live from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with The Greatest Royal Rumble; the show features a stacked card and will be WWE's first live broadcast from outside North America in 2018, airing starting at midday in the Eastern time zone in the United States.
WWE doesn't often broadcast live from overseas, mostly because it creates a difficult decision between airing live at awkward times (like with Greatest Royal Rumble) or pretaping and airing at their regularly scheduled time (which worked for one of the entries on this list, but became impossible in the Internet Age, as with another).
Below are six times WWE recorded outside of North America, giving fans memorable moments, sometimes at strange times of day.
#6 AJ Styles gets a Phenomenal second
AJ Styles is no stranger to competing internationally, with his phenomenal career taking him all over the world and featuring him in Japan for the start of his unparalleled second act.
In November of 2017, Styles seemed slated for a spot on Team SmackDown's Survivor Series squad but faced an abrupt and dramatic change of plans. Jinder Mahal had been the reigning WWE Champion since the spring, starting with a shocking win over Randy Orton and continuing through two wins over Shinsuke Nakamura and, most regrettably, the return of the Punjabi Prison.
Mahal himself had his Survivor Series work cut out for him, scheduled to take on Brock Lesnar in a champion vs. champion "dream" match (with nothing at stake but pride); perhaps to simply pop the live crowd, or perhaps because the company felt a Mahal-Lesnar main event would be more fizzle than sizzle, WWE called a historic audible for their November 7 SmackDown Live in Manchester, England.
Styles seemed doomed to fall to the repeated interference of the Singh brothers, as so many hapless babyfaces had throughout Mahal's run on top, before silencing the Modern Day Maharaja with a Phenomenal Forearm for the win and the championship. According to WWE's own official history, the victory made Styles' second world title win the first time a WWE world championship changed hands outside of North America.
Unfortunately, time zones and network timeslots reared their ugly heads; though the match was taped in prime time in England, the show would have begun in the early afternoon on the East Coast, which didn't fit with SmackDown's 8 p.m. airtime. WWE opted to air the UK shows on a delay, as they have with both European and Japanese television tapings, but got out in front of their own spoilers by mentioning a major title change on their own social media before the show began.
The match, though, and the moment were still phenomenal, regardless of the lack of a shock.