As the coronavirus forces the entertainment industry to enact serious measures to stop the spread and flatten the curve, wrestling is no different.
But, like all showbusiness, the show must go on and the WWE has taken to taping their shows in an empty stadium with just the wrestlers and the referee. That means it's the exact same show as scripted and written, with all the chair shots, dropkicks and mic drops - except it's dead silence from the non-existent audience.
As Blindboy quite correctly pointed out on Twitter last night, this could easily pass for black-box, experimental theatre that explores and deconstructs masculinity in a combative, stringently patriarchal environment with homoerotic overtones.
Seriously, if you moved this out of the sports stadium and into a small theatre, they'd be talking about it on RTÉ Radio 1's Arena and you'd see a review of it in a major broadsheet, not us idiots trying to make sense of it.
By the same token, as much as we're taking this piss here, you have to give the WWE credit for not letting a major viral pandemic get in the way of selling and hyping WrestleMania or the likes of Triple H and John Cena not giving it the same kind of intensity were it live in front of thousands of people.
That's professionalism right there.
