Sports Time Radio

Well sports fans it appears as tough we still have no idea on when will see a live sporting event. With the announcement by President Trump that he’s extending the stay at home order through the end of this month it looks like any hope of us seeing something as early as May 1st is out the window. Now I know they where hoping to see the country start recovering by Easter, but I think just about everyone though that was too soon. Hopefully if there right this time around and things can start to return to normal at the end of the month then will have a better idea about when some type of sporting event might return.

I don’t believe that either the National Basketball Association or the National Hockey League has said anything about what they’re planning to do with what’s left of their regular season and their playoffs. I’ve mentioned here before that if they do decide to comeback and at this point I don’t think they should, but if they do they should just head right into the playoffs. I think the bigger question with both the NBA and the NHL is how long will it take the players to get ready to start playing games again. They’ll have to allow the teams some type of shorten training camp to get ready.

As for Major League Baseball; well they’ve already told us how they plan on handling things. It appears that once things are up and running will get a two to three week extension of spring training and then they’ll start the regular season. Now there’s still no number of games that has been set, but that would be difficult to do right now. Of course the owners did come out and say that they’d like to play as close to 162 games as possible. Let’s hope that things work out as planned and at the end of this month players will be able to report back to spring training. Does that mean we could see the MLB season starting a early as May 22nd. Now I don’t think that’s going to happen, but that would be close to MLB’s own timetable. To be honest I’d like to see them wait until Sunday May 31st and kick everything off then. At this point I guess will just continue to wait and see how this month plays out.

Now I’m not sure how many people consider professional wrestling a sport. While you do have to be athletic to be a professional wrestler a lot of people don’t put it in the sporting category because the outcome of the matches are predetermined. I’d be interested to get your views on professional wrestling as a sport or not.

Anyway this weekend is World Wrestling Entertainments biggest show of the year. Or what would be their biggest show of the year had there not been an outbreak of Covid-19. With everything going on WWE had to make changes to Wrestlemania. For the first time the event won’t be live as the matches have already been taped, but they’ve split the event into two nights. Part one airs tomorrow night with the second half of the show airing Sunday night. It hasn’t been announced which matches will be feature on which night, but obviously after tomorrow nights broadcast you’ll know what matches will be left to air on Sunday night. The show was also filmed with no audience; so it’s going to look just like their television shows have lately.

There was also some interesting news television wise for WWE. There have been some reports that after Wrestlemania airs this weekend the company will shutdown until they can begin having crowds at their shows. What makes this big news is the fact that RAW has aired every Monday night since January 11th 1993. If you think about that it’s an amazing feat. That’s over 27 years showing a different show every week as there are no reruns of RAW.

Now not only does WWE show RAW every Monday night on the USA Network, but there is a second WWE program called NXT that airs Wednesday nights also on the USA Network. WWE also has a third brand called Smackdown which airs every Friday night on Fox. Raw is a three hour program while NXT and Smackdown each have a two hour run time. I’m not sure how WWE or the networks they’re on would fill 7 hours of programming and as of right now none of this is has been confirmed; it’s just something WWE is considering.

Apparently the talk of this possible shutdown for WWE came about because they’ve been filming there shows in Florida at a facility they call the performance center, but Florida has recently issued a stay at home order which could possibly affect the WWE’s ability to get some of their wrestlers to the taping.

I’m not as big of a fan of the WWE product as I use to be, but the shows are still very popular and do solid ratings for the network they’re on. I’m not sure if showing old matches or even old pay per views would fill the void for fans. The WWE’s ratings have struggled since they started running shows with no audience and you’d have to think not having new matches would hurt those ratings even more.

Again nothing has been decided on what WWE will do after Wrestlemania airs this weekend, but I’m under the impression they’ve already made a decision. As usual RAW is scheduled to air Monday and you’d think if WWE had decided to shutdown production some kind of announcement would’ve been made. Of course I guess they could always make that announcement during the Wrestlemania pay per view either Saturday or Sunday night.

What do you see WWE doing? Do you think that they’ll close up shop for a while? Or do you think that they’ll continue to record matches for RAW, NXT and Smackdown?

Even with what seems like nothing to talk about the Sports Time Radio podcast is still up and running over at BlogTalkRadio.com. If you missed any of the podcast just head over to TuneIn.com and you can catch up over there.

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