GCW The Collective has been under the microscope since hosting its weekend event which has been followed by multiple positive tests for Covid-19, including a new one today from Jaden Newman.
GCW promoter Brett Lauderdale sat down with Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful and talked about protocol for testing and his reasons for continuing to host events
What protocols was GCW mandated to adhere to?
When we first signed up, there were still restrictions in place. I had to write a 12-page COVID-19 risk mitigation plan, which spelled out our precaution and what we planned to do to keep spectators and the athletes safe. I went through all 12 pages and spelled it all out. These had to be evaluated and these plans were approved before Indiana rolled back. When this was planned, there were rules in place.
Why didn’t GCW mandate negative tests before talent came in?
There is no good answer that would soothe everyone’s concerns. Now that Indie wrestling has come back and there are promotions running regularly and there are big shows occurring and the top performers are working regularly, what you’re basically doing is, putting the validity of any testing into question. There are those incubation periods and the severity of cases as well. It may take your three days to test positive, it may take me seven to ten days. Do we know if we get an accurate result?
If someone does test positive, why not mandate (a test result) it to at least reduce the spread?
We tried to enforce this and other promotions tried to enforce this, but for a lot of people, they just can’t get tested. In a perfect world, we would be able to do this with every show and every performer. I wish we were at the point to where we could do that. Going forward, I’m going to do my best to enforce this. We are going to make this part of our requirements going forward. I wish we had done this for The Collective and I apologize and am sorry that we didn’t. There were many performers who were asked to, depending on who they were in the ring with, who did do it. If that was a requirement, then we failed and we should have done it. It just very difficult to get done.
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(H/T fightful for transcript)
