Unlike pretty much every other major North American sports leagues, World Wrestling Entertainment decided not to shut down when the COVID-19 pandemic came to America. WWE, and professional wrestling companies in general, have a very proud tradition of not having an off season. Professional wrestlers are constantly working and traveling almost every day of the year with no breaks, unless they are granted one by WWE, which rarely happens. WWE, in keeping with this tradition, decided to do everything in their power to continue running shows. 

Somewhat surprisingly, WWE was able to stay open with no cancelled shows for the entire length of the pandemic. You may be asking yourself, how is this possible? Wouldn't regulations put in place by state governments shutting down all non-essential businesses affectWWE at some point? The answer to these questions lies in Vince McMahon's political connections. Like all wealthy people, Vince McMahon regularly gives legal bribes to politicians under the guise of campaign donations. But Vince McMahon has closer connections to the Republican Party than most billionaires. Vince McMahon is close personal friends with the President of the United States, Donald Trump. In fact, his wife, Linda McMahon, once served in Trump's cabinet as the head of the Small Business Administration. Vince McMahon was able to use those political connections to get the Governor of the State of Florida, Ron DeSantis, to declare the WWE an essential business. WWE was able to use this classification to operate in Florida unencumbered by the restrictions that many other businesses had to deal with

But one problem still remained, namely where WWE was going to hold their shows. Obviously, WWE could not hold their shows in normal arenas, since almost all of them had closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the WWE found themselves forced to hold shows at the WWE Performance Center, in Orlando Florida. The WWE Performance Center is a building were the WWE trains wrestlers who sign with them. The gym in their performance center, which is not much larger than the average high school gymnasium, was now home to all of their events. The WWE, like all other sports leagues, was not allowed by the state of Florida to have any fans in attendance. This meant that WWE's annual flagship event, Wrestlemania, which is normally held in front of at least 60,000 fans in an NFL stadium, was now held in a small gym with no fans. It was a jarring experience, to say the least

After states began reopening, WWE eventually moved out of their performance center into the Amway Center, still in Orlando Florida. In order to add more flavor to things, the WWE called the Amway Center the WWE Thunderdome. To be fair to WWE, they did dramatically alter the Amway Center for their shows. Besides adding their normal stage and ring, the WWE added numerous rows of LED boards were the audience would normally be seated, showcasing fans watching the show. The NBA had something similar to this in their bubble, but WWE took it to new heights by adding many more screens than the NBA ever had during their games. WWE, for all of their faults, probably had the most impressive setting for their matches out of all the other sports leagues.

As one would expect, WWE experienced numerous COVID-19 outbreaks over the course of the pandemic. However, we still do not know which wrestlers exactly caught the virus. Professional wrestling companies have always been very guarded towards the press to hide the fact that they are scripted. But even once this tradition was widely exposed, WWE still tries to keep the press at arm’s length. The only reason why we now that there were numerous outbreaks of the virus is because some wrestlers leaked it to wrestling journalists. WWE's lead interviewer Renee Paquette, known to wrestling fans as Renee Young, was one of the only ones under WWE's umbrella who defied orders and revealed on Twitter that she had caught the virus. WWE did not punish her, likely because of all of the negative PR it would cause, but she later expressed that she was dissatisfied with the way that the company handled her catching the virus. Overall, I would categorize WWE's response to the pandemic as the worst of all major sports organizations.

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare many of the problems that long laid deep under surface in WWE. Due to the raunchy nature of their product and carny nature of their business, WWE has never had a good image amongst the public. But during the era of COVID-19, the WWE hit a new low. Unlike every other major North American sports league, the wrestlers in WWE do not have a union. This has allowed the WWE to deny their wrestlers things they normally receive as athletes, such as reimbursement for their travel expenses, or guaranteed contracts, or increased wages as the company makes more money due to television deals. But by far the most significant thing that this has allowed WWE to do is classify all their wrestlers as independent contractors. For those of you who do not know, independent contractors are typically people that are employed to do a short term job, like a plumber or a carpenter. WWE wrestlers do not fit this definition, but have never the less have always been classified this way. The significance in the independent contractor label is that it allows the WWE to not provide wrestlers with services that are required for full time employees under law, such as healthcare. This fact has long been known by hardcore wrestling fans, but largely a secret to the outside observer. Events over the COVID-19 pandemic would make this fact and all that it entails more widely known than ever.

The first major labor related incident to befall the WWE during the pandemic was the widespread release of talent and personnel. Near the very start of the pandemic, WWE did something that no other sports league had done, release a large portion of their talent and staff. Due to loss of revenue because of the shutdown, many businesses understandably had to do this in order to stay afloat during the pandemic. But in WWE's case, it was not a matter of release these talents or go out of business. Due their newly signed television deals with FOX and NBC, WWE was on track to make more money than they had ever done  before, regardless if they cut talent and staff. But WWE's projections would have been lower than they were expecting at the beginning of the year, so they cut a bunch of people to make up the difference. This was especially cruel on WWE's part, since most other wrestling companies had shut down during the pandemic and could not give work to those who were now unemployed. As had happened for most of wrestling history, the executives profited, while the workers suffered.

The next major incident that occurred was the Speaking Out Movement, which is essentially professional wrestling's version of the Me Too movement. Beginning in 2015, female wrestlers began to be taken more seriously in professional wrestling. Once used solely for their bodies in between men's segments, women were now being pushed  as relative equals to men. This led to a flood of females entering the wrestling business and being booked on wrestling cards all around the world. Unfortunately, this led to a dramatic increase in the number of females who were being sexually harassed in a largely male dominated industry. In the summer of 2020, a brave few women accused a number of wrestlers on the British independent wrestlering scene of sexually harassing and abusing them. The flood gates were now open, as women from all over the wrestling industry began to share their stories. Not a single company was spared from these allegations, including WWE. Forced by the public, WWE did suspend and fire a few of the individuals who were accused that had legitimate evidence against them. But many wrestlers, including Matthew Riddle, were not punished in the slightest. Female talents were unable to file grievances with their union, because there was no union.

The final major incident, and probably the one that is most related to unionization, was WWE firing of Zelina Vega. Due to the coronavirus pandemic locking WWE down in Florida, WWE talent were traveling less than they had ever done before. With their new found free time, many WWE talents began to create Twitch, Cameo, and Only Fans channels to pass the time and make some money on the side. WWE, seeing that their talent was making money through these methods, wanted a piece of the action. In the early fall of 2020, WWE demanded that all of the talent hand over the ownership these accounts to them. Worse yet, WWE told talent that the money that they would now make over all of these services, if they decided to continue doing them, would now count against the money that they had guaranteed to pay them. A female wrestler named Zelina Vega, thinking that it was unfair that WWE was trying to have total control over the all of the business transactions of an independent contractor, refused to comply with WWE's demands. As a result of her actions, she was released by the WWE from her contract. In a smart move, moments before her release was announced to the public, she tweeted "I support unionization." This caught the attention of the Screen Actors Guild and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Andrew Yang promised to use his connections in the Democratic Party to challenge WWE's classification of talent as independent contractors when Joe Biden takes office in January. And the SAG had a conservation with Zelina Vega in early December, which many speculate was about possibly letting professional wrestlers into the SAG. For the first time since Jesse Venture unsuccessfully tried to form a union during the early 1990s, there is more momentum than ever behind the idea of a wrestlers union.