GCW Owner Brett Lauderdale recently appeared on the Wrestling Inc. Daily to hype up the promotion’s upcoming Fight Forever event, and discuss the multiple COVID-19 protocols that have been taken to avoid spreading the virus. Highlights are below.
Talks the COVID-19 protocols for Fight Forever:
“Obviously, throughout the course of the last six and a half months since we resumed shows in June, a lot has evolved in how we approach it all and how you can keep things as safe as possible, and it’s a progress as we learn more and guidelines change and we learn more about COVID itself. I can speak to this event. Obviously, this is another big challenge. Off the top, I’ve gone as far as to post this on social media and make it as public as possible so that nobody can say they didn’t know, everybody that will be in the building for this event is required to have a COVID test, and we actually have one of our referees, Adam Gault, is actually our designated COVID guy. He’s got the master list. He’s going to make sure that if you come in this building, you have either submitted your COVID test or you have it on on your person before you get in the building. We’re not just saying it. We’re enforcing this, and we have the receipts to back it up so to speak so. There will be no, ‘I forgot to take it or anything.’ We’re really cracking down on this. In addition, we’re going to do our best to map out a schedule so that there’s not 100 wrestlers in a locker room at the same time. As you’ve seen, we’ve broken down these 24 hours into two blocks, one hour, two hour blocks of matches.”
How he’s been scheduling people in different blocks so there’s less people around:
“So what I’ve been working on the last couple weeks and I will continue to work on up until this thing starts is I’m going to kind of block out times for each person to come and each person to leave so that there’s nobody sticking around for 16 hours and clogging up a locker room when they really only need to be there for two or three. So again, we’re going to be really mindful of that, and of course, we’re going to be doing our best to keep things clean in the ring, and in the locker room, we’ll be sanitizing on the go. As we’ve done from day one, we’re going to do our best here.”
Says that it’s been super challenging:
“This has certainly been challenging, obviously, and it’s exhausting. This whole thing, this whole pandemic lifestyle has been exhausting, and I do feel a lot of responsibility and I do feel that burden, but that’s one of the things that drives me, being under pressure and taking on these challenges and these responsibilities. Personally, I kind of feel like if I’m not doing that, then I’m not doing my job. I like challenges like this, and I’m willing to put my name on it. And I’m willing to take the shots if I have to for the greater good. If I can help 50, 100 – 150 people, I want to do it, and I’ll do whatever it takes to do that. And if that means that my life is going to be stressful for a month. In the long run, it’s for the greater good, and I thrive on that.”
Gives thoughts on when things may become normal again:
“I would love to tell you that I think sold out, 1,000 seat shows are right around the corner, but in reality, I have no idea. I don’t know any more than you do or any more than anybody else does. This whole thing has been unpredictable, and everything is on the fly. Of course, I’m optimistic, and I want to remain optimistic. And of course, I’m looking forward to getting through the worst parts of this thing, but I don’t have a calendar on my wall that says, ‘By this date, we’re in the clear.’ We’re just going to continue to do our best as best we can when we can. If we can run more shows, then we’ll run more shows. If we have to scale back, we’ll scale back, but the one thing that I’m not going to do is just give up and just throw in the towel and say maybe next year. I will take on these challenges on behalf of GCW, and I know that our entire crew and our locker room wants to keep going as best we can. We are going to keep going, and hopefully there is, as you say, a windfall. I think when you say ‘windfall’ you mean the enthusiasm will return and people will return.”