Alleged Employee At County Meeting: ‘WWE Is Forcing Me To Work’ During Pandemic

There was a new wrinkle on Tuesday morning in the ongoing controversy over WWE returning to live shoots—subsequently amended to biweekly live shoots—for its weekly in-ring television shows during the coronavirus pandemic. (The move was allowed by an April 9 order in Florida deeming closed-set sports productions “essential business.”) Ever-controversial since the plan was revealed a week and a half ago, public sentiment towards the move got even worse last week when WWE laid off dozens of wrestlers and other staff in spite of the cost savings being minimal relative to the postponement of the company moving to a new headquarters. That WWE had seemingly been protecting their massive television rights fees with the decision to go live made the layoffs all the more shocking, since they were seemingly just to maintain pre-coronavirus profit projections.

And that’s before you even get into coronavirus concerns specifically, which is what Tuesday morning’s news has to do with.

Every Tuesday morning at 9:00 a.m., there is a Board of County Commissioners meeting in Orange County, Florida, the county that houses both of WWE’s shooting locations right now. (Monday Night Raw and SmackDown are shot at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, while NXT is shot at Full Sail University’s Full Sail Live in Winter Park.) As with many such meetings, there is a public comment section, and this time, on Tuesday, April 21, the one “non-judicial” comment was sent in by someone, “John,” who claimed to be a WWE employee.

“My employer, World Wrestling Entertainment, a.k.a. WWE, is forcing me to work the TV tapings for its weekly shows despite stay-at-home orders for coronavirus,” began the public comment, which was first reported by local reporter Jon Alba of Spectrum Sports 360. “I am unable to speak out, as I need this job, and I know I will be fired if I approach my higher-ups. Despite sanitary precautions, we cannot maintain social distancing, and have to touch other people. I request the government to shut down these tapings and enforce the stay-at-home order so my colleagues and I may follow social distancing rules without fear or repercussion of losing our jobs.”

WWE has not yet replied to an email asking for a response to the complaint raised by “John” during the meeting. While, as an anonymous comment, there’s no way to track down whoever sent it in, there is at least one aspect of his public comment that is easy to confirm: That even outside of the in-ring wrestling, “we cannot maintain social distancing, and have to touch other people.”

A cursory look at Instagram posts shows as much, starting with a video in Charly Caruso’s Instagram story (uploaded Monday night, April 20, archived here): Shot by Caruso, it shows WWE makeup artists Victoria Costa and “bfabulous1” (her account does not list her real name) presenting a birthday cupcake to their colleague, Mickey Fitzpatrick. Only Costa has a mask, but it’s down around her neck, while nobody’s wearing gloves, and they’re also in close contact, touching each other and singing/talking/potentially spreading droplets all over each other and/or the cupcake. Another video (archived here), posted to Costa’s story, showed her with her mask on as she worked on Charlotte Flair, but she still wasn’t wearing gloves. And a regular Instagram post from Fitzpatrick (archived here) showed him taking a selfie with Nia Jax that ignored currently recommended safety measures.

In the same email where I asked WWE about “John’s” public comment, I asked about how the above reflected on “John’s” allegation. I also asked how exactly this should be reconciled with WWE’s April 11 statement to ESPN that tapings will be comprised of “only essential personnel in attendance following appropriate guidelines while taking additional precautions to ensure the health and wellness of our performers and staff.” As noted above, they have not responded as of this writing. If they reply after publication, this article will be updated with a time stamped note to reflect the change.

Updated 5:10 p.m. ET: While WWE has not responded to the email requesting comment for this article, they did reply to Stephanie Coueignoux of My News 13 in Florida:

As noted earlier, any claims on WWE’s part about social distancing being practiced outside of performances is clearly false from looking at the social media accounts of talent and staff. In addition to the above listed instances, Nia Jax, for example, posted two videos on TikTok overnight (archived here) that were shot at work and feature egregious social distancing violations by her, ring announcer Mike Rome, and referee John Cone.

David Bixenspan is a freelance writer from Brooklyn, N.Y. He writes the Babyface v. Heel subscription blog/newsletter and co-hosts the Between The Sheets podcast every Monday at BetweenTheSheetsPod.com/everywhere else that podcasts are available. You can follow him on Twitter at @davidbix and view his portfolio at Clippings.me/davidbix.