Yesterday, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings took part in a press conference to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and WWE received a mention! That's no great surprise, however, especially when there's currently a stay-at-home order in Florida and the company continues running shows in Orlando's WWE Performance Center.
Believe it or not, he's decided that WWE is an essential business, and that means the sports entertainment company is going to be able to continue taping RAW, SmackDown, and NXT each week.
"I think there was a review that was done that they were not initially deemed an essential business," Demings confirmed. "With some conversation with the governor’s office regarding the governor’s order, they were deemed an essential business. So there they were allowed to remain open."
Adding that WWE is like a small family (really!), he mentioned the lengths the company is going to in order to protect its wrestlers, and it sounds like that's good enough for the state of Orlando right now.
This is definitely a surprise, but it could go some way in explaining why Vince McMahon recently decided that shows will continue airing live moving forward rather than being taped in advance over a number of days (it was previously reported that content would be shot right up to Money in the Bank).