How WWE Handled Clash Of Champions Medical Issues

They had a plan for that. There are all kinds of things going on in the world of wrestling at the moment with several problems that are beyond WWE’s control. One of the bigger issues involves the Coronavirus, which has hit the wrestling world in a major way. Without a specific reason confirmed, several names missed this Sunday’s Clash Of Champions but WWE had at least one replacement on hand.

On Sunday afternoon, news broke that several names would be missing Clash Of Champions after not being medically cleared for the show. As a result, some changes were going to have to be made, including a pair of title matches being adjusted. One title match had to be removed entirely as both champions were unable to wrestle, but at the same time WWE did have a replacement on hand to make sure one match took place.

During Clash Of Champions, Bayley defended the SmackDown Women’s Title against Asuka, who was replacing Nikki Cross in the title match. Cross was one of the three names deemed medically unable to wrestle on the show, leaving Bayley to issue an open challenge. Bayley would successfully defend her title when she lost to Asuka via disqualification. In addition to Cross, Women’s Tag Team Champions Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler were unable to wrestle either but their title defense against the Riott Squad was canceled outright.

This went well enough. Check out the match that we wound up seeing:

Opinion: This was one of those situations where WWE only had so many options and picked one of their better ones. WWE has a rather deep bench and that is the kind of thing that they can use in such a situation. Hopefully their roster will be back at full strength sooner rather than later, but what matters most is that the wrestlers are healthy, which might take some time to accomplish.

What did you think of the replacement match? Who could have replaced Baszler and Jax? Let us know in the comments below.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his- Amazon author page with 30 wrestling books. Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. Thank you for reading!