There has been a lot of criticism over WWE deciding to go forward with WrestleMania 36 despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
WWE will be holding WrestleMania 36 in front of an empty crowd inside the Performance Center from Orlando, Florida. Many talents have been pulled from the card due to health concerns. Roman Reigns, who has battled leukemia twice now, was removed from his scheduled Universal Title match with Goldberg. Braun Strowman now takes his place.
Also, WrestleMania is being stretched out over two days. The first will be Saturday, April 4, and will conclude on Sunday, April 5. Like many other major sports leagues, WWE is being called on to postpone their biggest event of the year until things subside. However, Vince McMahon has opted for the show to go on. Now, speaking on the Wrestling Observer Radio program, WWE Hall Of Famer and All Elite Wrestling (AEW) commentator Jim Ross has offered his thoughts on the situation.
If it were up to Ross, he’d pull the plug on WrestleMania and save the event for a later date.
“I would’ve waited until I could’ve got it to an arena, or a stadium, and I would’ve made a big celebration out of it that we’re back, America’s back, the virus is gone, celebratory WrestleMania probably,” Ross said. “But here’s the problem with that, that’s already been, I’m sure, budgeted in for a certain amount of money, and because of the uncertainty of the virus we don’t know when that date would be to run the stadium show as the make good, the celebratory WrestleMania as I call it, and so I can understand it budgetarily, they’re a publicly traded company, they have to make money for their stockholders, their stock needs to rebound, blah blah blah.
“So I don’t know if my suggestion is a great one whatsoever, but I can tell you it would be so easy to replicate amazing enthusiasm, anticipation and excitement in a make good, celebratory WrestleMania, vis-a-vis it’s a television vehicle like we’ve done on AEW the last few weeks, like WWE has done, in a closed set. The empty arena thing. The empty arena thing is okay to keep programming on, but it’s not much fun to work at because you get used to that adrenaline that the fans provide. There’s nothing like that.”
H/T Wrestling Inc. for the transcriptions
