Triple H and WWE’s WrestleMania 43 Announcement Draws Backlash At Worlds Collide: Las Vegas

Written by Shounak Chakrabarti • Published Sep 12, 2025 23:48 EDT
WWE WrestleMania 43

The WWE Las Vegas crowd is not happy.

Earlier today, hours before the September 12th editions of SmackDown and Worlds Collide: Las Vegas, the Stamford-based promotion announced WrestleMania 43. Scheduled to be held in 2027, WrestleMania 43 will take place in Saudi Arabia.

Following the conclusion of SmackDown in Norfolk, fans were treated to another WWE show, where the promotion collaborated with Lucha Libre AAA for Worlds Collide and showcased an extremely talented match card. However, mid-way through the show, as WWE started promoting its upcoming WrestleMania 43 in Saudi Arabia, fans across the arena let out loud boos.

Everyone across the arena came together to display their disapproval and loudly booed the announcement before starting the chant of, “You sold out”.

Despite the widespread backlash, it seems the promotion might not back away from the decision, as it seems to be a part of the WWE’s strategic alliance with the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Sport.

Triple H Explains The Rock’s Thoughts On John Cena’s WWE Heel Turn

Earlier this year, before WrestleMania 41, John Cena shocked the world when he turned heel and joined forces with The Rock. Later, during WWE: Unreal series on Netflix, Triple H opened up on The Rock’s thoughts on Cena’s heel turn.

“There are five people that I talk to with a move this big. It’s Rock, obviously it’s Cody, Cena, Travis Scott, who we wanna help build this idea around, and then WWE President, of course, Nick Khan.

So my first call is to Nick, who’s also a (TKO) board member alongside The Rock. I run the idea by him, Nick basically says, “Love all of it.” So my next reach out at that point is to The Rock. I hit him with “What if…hear me out on this,” and he just listened, and every now and then, through the conversation, he would go “Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.” I wasn’t sure if he was giving me the “Mm-hmm, just get to the end so I can tell you how much I hate it.”

And I got to the end and he was like, “Wow, man I gotta tell you I think that’s genius.” He immediately started riffing thoughts and ideas so we spent another 30 minutes on the phone together talking about this. The more we talked about it, the more we were both getting excited about it and into it.”

In other news: The Rock and Steve Austin’s status for WrestleMania 43 revealed.