Felix Upton on September 23, 2020
WWE NXT reportedly saw an outbreak of COVID-19. The first positive test was said to have been discovered on September 9th with more reportedly coming in as positive over the weekend.
The company does not want people talking about positive COVID-19 tests. Renee Paquette revealed that WWE wasn’t thrilled about her revealing a positive result, but there was no heat from the company.
During Wrestling Observer Live, Bryan Alvarez commented on the current COVID-19 situation in WWE’s Performance Center. Jon Alba reported that the virus is thought to have spread through a trainer. Alvarez mentioned the strange booking going into NXT TakeOver on October 4th and how some thought it was caused by the positive coronavirus tests in the black and gold brand.
“This is what I can tell you. So, when they started announcing the competitors for this Gauntlet Eliminator, I mean I like all of these guys, but when you think about it these are your five top competitors, it’s not the North American Title — it’s the NXT Title.”
It was pointed out how nobody in the Gauntlet Eliminator is really on a hot streak. Bronson Reed is the only one who has any kind of sustainable momentum, but it is still in its early stages. Kyle O’Reilly is amazing, but he’s been a part of the Undisputed Era for so long that his last singles match was at a Progress show in 2018.
“People like concluding that this COVID thing must have taken out everybody. This is who we are left with, right? So, when I first started hearing the rumors I asked some people at NXT and they had heard nothing about it. Zero. They said the story that COVID is the reason for these matches, there’s nothing to it, they have heard nothing about it.”
“So, Jon Alba reported that he heard something about COVID down there. The fact of the matter is that the last time WWE had a big outbreak down there, I mean they don’t want anybody talking about anything. They want this to be top secret. They don’t want you tweeting about it. They don’t want you talking about. They got angry at people who revealed that they have COVID. They have clamped down on this. The reality is we’ll probably never going to find out what happened with NXT and COVID, but in the past couple of days I mean it appears that some people in NXT got COVID.”
“It appears that that is not a gigantic number of people because there were people who told me that they know nothing about it. It did happen, there was some people, we’ll probably never actually know an actual number. I wish I could tell you more, but that’s the way it is they don’t want anything [about COVID-19] out and for all we know they may have had everyone sign something new in their contracts like a non-disclosure agreement for COVID, I don’t know, but it’s certainly being kept very quiet. So, that’s the update.”
WWE never stopped running through the pandemic, and this is one of the risks that they run in times like these. It was said that some of the mask wearing policies outside of the ring at WWE’s training facility were laxed prior to this outbreak. Hopefully, everyone is able to make it through this situation.
Transcription by Ringside News
September 23, 2020 3:59 pm
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