Why WWE Was Forced To Change Television Taping Plans This Week

The novel coronavirus hit WWE hard, but fans aren’t allowed to know exactly how hard they were hit. Multiple Superstars were positive for COVID-19 and others decided not to work the tapings. This all created an issue which prevented WWE from recording the content they planned to this week.

WWE will be back at the Performance Center next week on Thursday and Friday to tape again. During Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer discussed WWE’s decision. They didn’t have enough people around to record the episode after losing so many around the chaos caused by the novel coronavirus.

“Originally they were going to tape two SmackDowns and two RAWs, but they had so few people they only had to do an hour of SmackDown and that’s here the Undertaker things came in and you know so with RAW they were gonna do two RAWs and the decision was made they taped one RAW earlier today and they didn’t tape the second RAW because they didn’t want to do another short-handed RAW so they’re gonna wait a week and they’re adding tapings next week that were not scheduled to be done because they didn’t have enough people to do RAW and SmackDown and in a week they figure they’ll have people cleared.”

It was noted that if someone failed a COVID-19 test this week then they’d need at least 2 weeks to recover. We’ll have to see how many of those missing Superstars were actually unable to work at doctor’s orders, or they just decided to go home and not take the risk. Perhaps WWE will be able to convince some people to return to work if they’re needed.