WWE Crown Jewel 2023: Christiano Ronaldo, Al-Nassr captain, to guest star in spectacular event
Portuguese and Al Nassr star, Christiano Ronaldo has been invited by the owners of WWE, Endevour, as a guest star in their professional wrestling event, Crown Jewel show, which comes up in September.
After stunning Europe with the ripples of his exodus to Saudi Arabia, where the European star player keeps on shinning, his fame and quality has started drawing Western cash towards him in Saudi Arabia.
All this comes after his name started missing in the major European football awards scheduled to be handed out this year. A phenomenon many think is based on the blow his transfer brought to European football, for these assumers found it hard to point out where he was behind his accepted counterpart, Argentine Lionel Messi.
Ronaldo’s WWE appearance would draw great attention to the event from around the world, especially from the wealthy Middle East, where the noise of his arrival is yet to die down. Apart from the fact he is the most spectacular and handsome of the two GOATs of the time, his style and performance at Saudi Arabia keeps making him nothing below spectacular.
Endevour’s decision is understandable. The star is the greatest in the Middle East at the moment, and the Arabs do like him a lot for his past deeds in the pitch and his great relationship with them. Though one could call this an extraordinary shift in the profile of figures once invited as special guests to the world of combat entertainment, it also shows Endevour must have a cool group of marketers.
Most spectators would only be coming to see Christiano Ronaldo, and he would likely be given one ceremonial role or the other. It is very possible he would even address the public with the microphone, using his weak English – his days at Manchester United sadly did not reward him with good English.
Manchester United could not help but let him go when he he arrived the second time. Mike Phelan, who was a coach at Old Trafford made a statement on the first time and the second time the player played for the club. His claims threw more light on what might have caused the sad break up.
Mike Phelan speaks:
‘The first time, the challenging part was that Cristiano came to Manchester United knowing in his own mind that he was going to be the best in the world. He had one ball under his hand and the team had another. And this was a young kid, one who came from Portugal and was made there, and made that sacrifice to come away from that, where he was comfortable, to a club like Manchester United and learn everything from an English and British perspective.
“He had all the skill set, the mentality – but what we tried to do with [former assistant manager] Carlos Queiroz was we tried to integrate him into the team and he responded brilliantly. His work ethic and practice was fantastic and it rubbed off on the players. They knew there was someone special there. In that environment, with the standards so high, the players knew this guy could take them where they needed to go and to go again. He did that brilliantly.’
Here is his statement on Ronaldo’s last business with the club. It tries to show us a different, hard-to-work-with Christiano Ronaldo.
‘The second time round, he came in a lot older and a lot more opinionated, strong-willed. He still had massively high standards and was terrific to work with. But I’d probably say a tougher mindset. He had been at Man United, he had been Portugal’s ever-present, he had been at Madrid.
‘I liked it because he didn’t want his standards to drop, he wanted other people’s standards to come up. And sometimes you lose a few people along the way when that happens. I remember certain times when he pushed and pushed hard, and he didn’t get much reaction or much response. And there was frustration.
When you deal with top, top people, it’s about them and where they can finish and where they can get to. They want to look back and go ‘wow, that was successful’. And he probably realised, and I don’t know as I never had that conversation with him, that he couldn’t do it at Manchester United. So his challenges were elsewhere.
He’s still playing international football, yes he’s in Saudi Arabia, but he’s still playing and scoring goals. He is doing all the things we knew he could do at Manchester United. But a really good personality, hard-working and challenging. He challenged me as a coach, Carlos Queiroz as a coach and Sir Alex [Ferguson] as a manager. But that’s good because it takes you to another level.’
Manchester City defender, Richards said Ronaldo was scarier than Messi in those days.
‘We’ve always said that Messi’s better. It’s just effortless the way he moves around the pitch. But when I played against Ronaldo when he was at Man United – wow! I mean, I couldn’t switch off for a second. And this was in a derby. When we’re walking up the tunnel at Old Trafford, I was only young at the time, but I was looking to my left and thinking ‘oh my god, it’s Ronaldo’. I’m in awe of the guy. It was early times when he wasn’t just playing on the right wing, he was playing on the left as well.
‘He would come to me and just do five step-overs in two seconds. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He was such a genius. I bought every five of them. I was twisted and tangled before you knew it. He never said anything, but he just used to wink at me all the time. He’d dribble past me, he used to love a Cruyff chop, go past me, go inside and just wink at me. I was swearing at myself, but wow, what a player. And to see him go from that to Real Madrid. Phenomenal.’
Ronaldo keeps opening doors to new possibilities, as Messi and others keeps doing what has been done. Maybe that is the reason for his greater fame.