Abu Dhabi, Sep 29 (IANS): The IIFA Awards ceremony was a stellar show of celebration of cinematic excellence, entertainment, and the best of Indian cinema coming together.

While the audience enjoyed the ceremony hosted by Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan along with Karan Johar and Vicky Kaushal, the absence of SRK’s contemporary Salman Khan left the audience scratching their heads.

This particularly raised eyebrows because Salman has been closely associated with IIFA for the past two years. His sudden disappearance from the most prestigious event of the Indian cinema didn’t sit well with many people.

Former actor and film critics, who has earned the reputation of a blabber mouth owing to his antics on X, also shared his opinion on Salman absence as he said that the organisers of IIFA wanted SRK to host the ceremony given the landslide success of his last two releases ‘Pathaan’ and ‘Jawan’.

SRK also is very much hands on when it comes to hosting an event of this scale courtesy his charm, and the ability to think on his toes, and handle tricky situations while on stage.

Salman, on his part, is yet to deliver a blockbuster in the post-pandemic era with his last clean hit being ‘Sultan’ which was released 8 years ago.

However, things can turn around for Salman with his upcoming film ‘Sikandar’, just as it did for SRK. Prior to ‘Pathaan’ and ‘Jawan’, SRK was absent from the silver screen for more than 4 years with his last release being the commercial and critical disaster ‘Zero’ in the pre-pandemic era. His personal battle in his son Aryan Khan’s case further plummeted the megastar in trouble but he left all of that behind, and rose like a phoenix, single-handedly pulling the Bollywood out of its dull phase with two big hits.