WWE Rumors - Company to film RAW, SmackDown and portions of WrestleMania 36 in advance
As reported first by POST Wrestling's John Pollock, plans are being set in place to pre-tape all the upcoming weekly shows before WrestleMania 36.
As revealed by POST Wrestling's various backstage sources, the ambitious project, as of Thursday, was to film all the episodes of RAW and SmackDown before the Show of Shows.
A source added that the company could also end up filming sections of WrestleMania in advance, however, there was uncertainty regarding the surprising information.
POST Wrestling's report was also backed by Ryan Satin of Pro Wrestling Sheet and Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer. As of this writing, we are still waiting for a confirmation from WWE with regards to the aforementioned report.
WrestleMania 36 will be a two-day event and it will happen inside the empty WWE Performance Center on April 4th and 5th respectively.
Rob Gronkowski will host the historic 36th edition of WrestleMania and there is a lot of speculation going around regarding the final match card.
As reported first by Sportskeeda's Tom Colohue, the men's and women's Battle Royals have reportedly been scrapped from the card.
Many other matches, which were originally scheduled to be a part of the show, could also end up not making the final lineup. The coronavirus pandemic has forced the WWE officials to make unprecedented changes to the biggest show of the year and the backstage reaction has naturally not been that great either.
Vince McMahon, however, wants the show to go on and the company is putting together all the resources that would be needed to see them through this challenging phase.
Pre-taping the forthcoming episodes of RAW and SmackDown is a smart decision as WWE would have the freedom to tie up the loose ends when it comes to the production.
WWE has two episodes of RAW and SmackDown each to go before WrestleMania, and if you add in the two nights of 'Mania as well, the company would need to tape six shows.
Last week’s episode of SmackDown featured three matches but the WWE was reportedly not pleased with the empty arena matches and they promptly cut down on the in-ring time on the most recent episode of RAW, which featured the complete men’s Royal Rumble match as a filler. The company can avoid re-airing recent PPV matches now that they are taping the show and it will also give them the flexibility to execute some much-needed edits.
It' sounds like an enormous task to accomplish but WWE has the means to pull it off.