Bengaluru, July 29: WWE has recently confirmed the next Saudi Arabia event date that falls on Friday, November 1st. This brings quite an interesting situation as they'll have to tape a live edition of Smackdown Live on the same day. In case you didn't know, the B-show of the WWE will move to Fox Sports from October 4th onwards and in this new slot instead of Tuesday nights, the show will take place on Fridays.

So, one ought to ask how WWE will deliver the November 1st edition of Smackdown unless it's taped. After all, it's not possible to fly down all the superstars from Saudi Arabia to the United States within a few hours. So WWE creative might plan something unique around the show where we will only witness the company's female superstars.

It's a known fact that the Saudi Arabia sports authority does not allow female wrestlers on their show despite a negative reaction to this rule among the WWE Universe. WWE also has enough faith that women would be allowed to wrestle in the country at some point but that's definitely not happening this year. So, that has led to the idea of an all-women Smackdown episode.

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter noted that WWE has a Smackdown Live episode scheduled for Newark on November 1st, hours after the next WWE event in Saudi Arabia. And with the female wrestlers, only being available in the USA, it's very much possible that WWE may end up loading the weekly show with female talents only. Here's more from the source, (courtesy ringsidenews.com)

"One way they could manage is to promote the Friday show in Newark as an all-women’s Smackdown show. That would at least take the place of the Evolution PPV that for whatever reason isn’t on the schedule this year. They could heavily promote it as an all-women’s Smackdown, the first-time-ever and could use that to offset the obvious criticism of them running if Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow the women to come."

WWE booking this all-women show would probably decrease the backlash as Saudi Arabia does not allow the women superstars to wrestle in PPV shows. Plus, this would also serve as a backup show for Evolution PPV hosted in 2018. The follow-up edition which was supposed to be hosted this year was canceled due to lack of bigger names on the roster. At least, the female talents will get a complimentary event if this Smackdown edition becomes a reality.



We have not seen such an episode in the history of WWE TV, which is expected to attract tons of attention in the future. So the host network, Fox Sports may not have problem with no male talents attending blue-brand-show on that particular night. WWE did try a lot to move next Saudi Arabia show to a different date by canceling several events from European Tour. But now it has returned back to the original slot that is on the first day of November, which collides with Smackdown.