Controversy isn’t exactly uncharted territory for World Wrestling Entertainment, better known as WWE. This is, after all, the company whose story lines have at various times featured date rape, necrophilia, a literal in-ring murder, and a man being pelted with the ashes of his real-life dead friend.

Yet even the WWE’s most controversial scripted moments were at least in the service of a story. The same can’t be said for the company’s recent decision to carry out public-relations work for a homicidal tyrant.

This past weekend saw the WWE’s so-called Greatest Royal Rumble held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the first event in a forthcoming decade-long partnership between the Kingdom of Saud and WWE that was inked earlier this year. Even before the pay-per-view spectacle last Friday, the company had faced criticism for making a deal with a government that not only regularly presses a boot on the faces of its citizens, but is currently in the midst of a years-long campaign of atrocities in Yemen.