Matt Hardy has opened up about his experience in Saudi Arabia.
The former WWE star visited the country with the rest of the roster for two early PLEs in the Kingdom. He teamed with Bray Wyatt to win the vacated Raw Tag Team Championships at the Greatest Royal Rumble in 2018 and competed in a battle royal at the 2019 Super ShowDown event.
During the latest episode of his Extreme Life with Matt Hardy podcast, the Broken One reflected on his experience in the country. He compared the environment there to Los Angeles where the accommodations were luxuries but they had to deal with hot weather. The former Champion also claimed that everyone he met there was super nice to him:
“All those people that came to the show or that we met, they were all super kind. They’re all super nice. I did like a VIP party at one point and everybody there was just as friendly and as kind as it could have been. That’s one of the things that I think sometimes people forget about. Most of the people that live in Saudi Arabia are just normal human beings like you and I that have red blood whenever their skin gets cut open, that have a heart and lungs and whatever else in there, just trying to make it through every day and trying to live the best life they possibly can.
So my impressions of it were that it was nice, and you could see there was wealth in the country. Some of the spreads we had to eat were like outrageously great and good. We were taken very good care of while we were there. The hotel was very nice. The food was very nice. So no complaints on any of that front. And even the people that we met that we worked with that were like more government-type officials they were all very nice. There was nobody that was weird. There was no one that was off-putting.”
It Made Me Appreciate United States Even More: Matt Hardy
Though despite all the luxuries, all the roster members were still on their toes not wanting to break any laws of Saudi Arabia. Matt Hardy also recalled an incident that made him appreciate the freedoms of US more:
“Probably the strangest thing and this is me being an American, right and growing up in the South. I just grew up [with] my dad, I would get my ass beat if it wasn’t ‘Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am.’ and whatnot. Just the way the women had to wear their outfits in the job whatever you see in majority of the women’s eyes.
Not everyone had to dress fully like that but the majority of the people did. There was one point where I was out on the beach hanging out with a couple guys. A couple guys came in front of us that were wearing shorts and short sleeve shirts, whatever. They say ‘Oh our kids are big fans. they would love to meet you.’ They said ‘If you can wait a second our wives are taking care of them’ Their wives were over there and they’re fully dressed in the outfits the wives have to wear during the day when they’re out on public.
And it was just, that was strange, you know, and I guess everybody that was there was just very much on their toes. They just wanted to act proper because you didn’t want to do anything that would break laws in Saudi Arabia obviously, just because it’s a very different culture from us. It is what it is. We knew what we were going into. It was a very different culture. They live very differently than we do here in America. I feel like even the experience of going over there made me appreciate America and the United States even more just because of all the freedoms we have.”
The latest WWE PPV from Saudi Arabia dubbed King and Queen of The Ring will be airing live from the Jeddah Super Dome on May 25.