It seems like Clash of Champions weekend has come at perhaps the absolute worst time for WWE... which may be dealing with yet another China virus outbreak amongst its performers.

This outbreak has been tracked back to a trainer at the WWE Performance Center... so essentially anyone who's been at the PC within the last few weeks is being shut down for a few weeks and NXT had to fight through short-staffing due to this outbreak.

Does anyone remember where Bayley attacked Sasha the second time... while Sasha was wearing the neck brace? Wasn't that the PC?

This outbreak has apparently reached the main roster and its reported that it may impact some current on TV storylines

By the way... this isn't just an American wrestling company thing... CMLL in Mexico also had a COVID outbreak in its locker room

Ivar, fka Hanson, did in fact have surgery on his neck following the injury he suffered on Raw a few weeks ago during an 8-man tag match. Hopefully he has a speedy recovery and can return quickly, though he is slated to miss roughly a year.

And sadly... the wrestling career of Tegan Nox may be over now as she has torn her ACL... AGAIN. This is at least the 3rd time in the last 4-5 years that Nox has torn her ACL. The 1st time caused her to miss the inaugural Mae Young Classic. The 2nd happened during the 2nd Mae Young Classic during a match against Rhea Ripley (which totally blew out her knee, not just her ACL). And now this. You hope this isn't the end for Tegan... but 3 torn ACLs in such quick fashion... I can't imagine anyone wanting to continue on. If she does decide to give wrestling another go... she should return in about a year.

Naomi also went under the knife recently to alleviate an issue that I don't think is directly related to wrestling... but she says her health is improved because of it so good for her. Pretty sure it wasn't a cosmetic surgery either.

Onto some more light-hearted stuff... Roman Reigns, who just came out of COVID hiding a few weeks ago, said Raw is like fast food while Smackdown is filet mignon... and honestly who doesn't agree with that comparison at the moment?

Peyton Royce is apparently receiving nothing but rave reviews backstage as someone who is easy to work with, while also putting in the work to make herself better.

Dijak (T-Bar), Thorne (Slapjack), & Maddin (Mace) have taken to twitter to poke fun at themselves for RETRIBUTION's not so hot start on the main roster... esp. their own character names

Alexa Bliss still isn't happy that the women's division isn't getting a push without Ronda Rousey around... saying a lot of women laid down to help push Ronda to the top of WWE and that all of those women should be main eventers too

AEW & NXT combined are still pulling nearly the same ratings number of Raw even though they both also competed against the NBA & NHL playoffs. Dynamite averaged 835,000 viewers on Wednesday while NXT pulled 696,000 viewers (noice). Raw is doing about 1.6M viewers at the moment on Mondays while more than 1.5M watched either AEW or NXT on Wednesday

And now for tonight's Clash of Champions go home edition of Friday Night Smackdown from WWE Thunderdome inside the Amway Center in Orlando, Fla.

Friendly reminder that the Saints are on SNF this week... so my participation in the CoC thread will be minimal

Roman Reigns and/or Paul E. Dangerously have something to say ahead of Sunday's Universal Championship match against his cousin Jey Uso

The Intercontinental "Champions" will do battle tonight as Jeff Hardy faces off against Sami Zayn that in no way will end thanks to interference by AJ Styles ahead of the ladder match this Sunday

Swampy Bliss squares up to Lacey Evans... who apparently wasn't too happy to receive a Sister Abigail last week

Swampy Lexi