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WWE is one of the lucky promotions that could carry out its usual work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though no fans are allowed in the arena, WWE has kept its fans engaged with the product through its weekly shows and the WWE Network.
WWE's plans if wrestling wasn't allowed during COVID-19
Former lead WWE writer Chris DeJoseph was in an interview with PW Torch's Wade Keller. During the conversation, DeJoseph spoke about all the ideas that were thrown around when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“We don’t even know if we would be able to have wrestlers wrestle each other. Are we going to do cooking segments? They asked all of us to run down a list of outside-of-the-box ideas of things that we could do.It was a huge compiled list. It was everything from have a big fight in the office to a cooking segment if we have to. Do we have everyone on Zoom from home? There were so many ideas because nobody knew what we were going to be able to do.”
WWE wanted to have fans for WWE RAW, SmackDown, NXT and PPVs and a few ideas regarding involving them were talked about.
“There was a lot of discussion about getting fans on screen watching the show and reacting. It started with SmackDown, and Fox had just tried it with a NASCAR race, and they didn’t feel it was worth doing. After going through all the trouble, they didn’t think the payoff really affected the show all that much. And you really can’t control what the audience reaction is. Also, eventually those shows we started doing in advance and it kind of became impossible to do something like that. There were also sorts of ideas, like live Twitter reactions."
“Everything was thrown against the wall. There was talk of animated fans. Nobody really knows what we’re doing here because it’s a whole new world. You’re watching other shows and seeing how they’re handling it. There was an idea – I threw an idea out there to have legends come on and do taped segments with them to add some newness to the show. We didn’t know if [the wrestlers would] even be allowed to wrestle each other at that point.”
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