WWE made changes to a long-standing tradition at latest tapings

At last week's round of television tapings, WWE made some changes to the usual format of their shows.

With that pandemic in effect, things have been moving very differently in WWE for some time now. Instead of hosting live shows in front of huge audiences in sold-out arenas, WWE has been hosting their shows at the WWE Performance Center instead, where the NXT developmental talent have been the ones who are part of the live crowd, cheering on other wrestlers. On top of that, the recent outbreak in the WWE Performance Center also saw WWE to finally enforce the decision for the crowd to be wearing masks while the show has been going on.

Now, it appears that the company has made yet another change to their shows at the last round of tapings, to not allow ring announcers to appear in the ring.

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WWE stops ring announcers from appearing in the ring

According to a report from Raj Giri of Wrestling Inc, WWE has now made the decision that ring announcers will not appear inside the ring during match introductions. With that being said, there is an exception to this rule, with ring announces appearing in the ring if the match that is about to take place has a WWE Championship on the line.

Even that may not always happen, as was seen recently on last week's WWE SmackDown, where AJ Styles faced Drew Gulak, defending his Intercontinental title. The match did not have a run announcer inside the ring and there were no introductions.

The report said that there have not been any reasons given for the changes being made. These changes, while they may seem small, are rather monumental, as WWE has always had a ring announcer introduce Superstars during their matches since the very beginning of the company. This might be a temporary change, but that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, it could be that WWE is doing this either because, without a live crowd, a ring announcer announcing matches and introducing Superstars is not really required, given that the commentators do a good job of that for the people at home. On the other hand, it could be any number of other things, but this is nothing more than speculation at this point.