The Mar. 13 edition of SmackDown was an odd one for everyone involved. Due to the precautions forced by the novel coronavirus, the broadcast from WWE’s Orlando Performance Center was the first “empty arena” episode in show history. This was uncharted territory - for producers, performers, and viewers.
Only three matches took place during the two hours on Fox, and seeing & hearing the wrestlers, referee, and announcers without a live audience to play off was quite something. One big difference from a usual television match? When the show went to commercial, there was no reason for the action to continue.
As the international stream showed, the women in last night’s tag match logically decided to not spend those minutes beating up their bodies for no one’s entertainment...
They really did stop wrestling during the commercials! pic.twitter.com/Pi6zBkz3qI
— Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful.com (@SeanRossSapp) March 14, 2020
We present this as a curiosity, not a criticism. One of the wrestlers in the clip, Alexa Bliss, took exception with it being shared. But like us, Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful clarified that he just found it interesting - and that he understood why Bliss, Nikki Cross, Sasha Banks, and Bayley would opt to handle the break the way they did. Alexa deleted her tweets criticizing people commenting about the show after her exchange with Sapp.
Haven’t seen any footage of how Daniel Bryan & Cesaro dealt with the commercials during their match, but I would expect they stopped as well.
Just a weird moment from a weird show in weird times.