AEW, Impact, and New Japan make coronavirus-related announcements

The NHL and NBA recently announced their plans to finish out their 2019 - 2020 seasons, after placing them on hiatus back in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. Major League Baseball is kicking around plans for how they’ll play this year, and the NFL is getting ready for a modified version of training camp to start.

Televised pro wrestling never stopped in the United States, but that doesn’t mean every company kept going. Even the promotions that continued producing TV have had to modify plans.

A handful of announcements related to adjustments made because of COVID came out this week. Well, in two cases, they’re announcements about announcements, but you get it.

- After their parent company, Bushiroad, said they plan to resume live events, New Japan posted the following:

- Impact World champion Tessa Blanchard has missed the last two tapings, including the one last week which will likely take them up to July’s Slammiversary PPV. They’ll be making an announcement about the title on their next episode (Tues., June 9).

- Like WWE, AEW has persisted. But obviously they haven’t been able to film in arenas with fans. Today they re-scheduled two of the shows they already had booked when the lockdown hit.

WWE is said to be filming two weeks worth of programming at their Orlando Performance Center next week, but plans don’t seem to be confirmed beyond that. Loosening of restrictions in some states, including Florida, may allow them to experiment with bringing fans back to shows in the not-too-distant future, but we’ll see.

Here’s hoping that regardless of how all these groups choose to proceed the end results is healthy rosters, staff, and fans.