Ace Romero says IMPACT Wrestling is doing their best to make him feel safe at work while they continue to create content in the “quarantine era” of professional wrestling.
Romero recently spoke with Jon Alba on the Living The Gimmick podcast and spoke about IMPACT Wrestling’s COVID-19 testing measures while they tape their weekly television show at Skyway Studios in Nashville. There has been plenty has been said about WWE and All Elite Wrestling’s testing protocols during their own respective television tapings but there haven’t been too many details about the precautions IMPACT has been taking to protect their talent.
Romero says their safety measures begin before they even head down to the studio for tapings, and IMPACT asks talent to self-isolate for two weeks prior to the tapings. He added that they now all have individual hotel rooms and various tests are administered once they are on set.
“For starters, they recommend to us about two weeks before the tapings to self-quarantine and then for the tapings itself, we have our own hotel rooms. Usually, we double up but we’ve been having our own hotel rooms,” Romero said, “which has been great. We get our temperature taken, we get our blood oxygen level taken, a bunch of more sciency-stuff that I don’t even know about. They take these measures, [use] gloves, the anti-bacterial stuff, all that stuff, EMTs. They take all of the measures and after tapings, they make sure to check in with people to see how we’re all doing. I always feel safe, I never feel worried about coming to work and being at risk.”
Romero did note that while all of these measures are being taken to track illnesses, the company is not doing a “full-blown” COVID-19 test. Romero did not go into detail as to what that entailed but said the company is taking as many precautions as they can to ensure performer safety.
“Not ‘full-blown’ COVID testing as some would say, but they are doing their best. There’s only a certain amount of people that can be in the studio at a time for taping. Social distancing has definitely been in play, and like I said, they check in on us as much as they can to make sure that we’re doing well and taking those precautions.”
All Elite Wrestling has been using COVID-19 Rapid Tests for on-air talent, production members and venue employees while they tape at Daily’s Place in Jacksonville. According to Tony Schiavone, once talent tests negative they receive a yellow wristband, followed by a blue one after their temperature checks. Both bracelets are required to be admitted, and Tony Khan has also said anybody who works backstage or around the ring is tested each week.
WWE had not been doing COVID-19 tests to start but they had been doing temperature checks and practicing social distancing measures. Once multiple positive tests were reported they began testing all talent, employees and production staff and have been doing proper testing since last month.
When asked for comment on the positive cases, WWE issued the following statement to WrestleZone:
“WWE will continue COVID-19 testing of its talent, production crew and employees in advance of TV productions for the foreseeable future.”
Check out the full interview at this link.
