The Crown Jewel premium live event has come and gone and the show featured a four match card. Ahead of the show promotional material for a Gunther vs. Finn Balor match surfaced, but ultimately the match was not added to the show.
While talking about the decision to leave the match off the card on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer noted that the plans for the match went back and forth, but Gunther eventually told the company he wasn’t going to go to Saudi Arabia.
“Gunther was the one who turned down going there. Which, we were told nobody was going to turn it down. At the time I was told nobody had turned it down. The way I heard it, they started building it up because they thought he was going to go. It went back and forth, eventually he said he was not going to go. Balor apparently was not all that excited about going either. The company was under the impression that if Gunther went, he was gonna go too. It didn’t come to that, Gunther didn’t go, the match was off.
Meltzer went on to state that there might be something to WWE booking Gunther to lose to Trick Willaims after refusing to go to Saudi Arabia when he added, “Gunther lost to Trick Williams tonight. Spin kick, Bookend, one, two, three. It’s possible it’s all coincidental. In a dark match the babyface does go over, that’s the rule. Usually with a guy the level of Gunther they’ll have someone do a run in and do a DQ. They protect the top guys in these type of matches, so there’s probably something to this.”
Following this week’s episode of Monday Night Raw, Trick Williams pinned Gunther clean in dark match. One way or another it will be interesting to see how Gunther is booked in the weeks to come.