Lynch, Rollins, Reigns, Big E & Belair among those pulled from WWE house shows

Last week, we heard a number of WWE talent and staff tested positive for COVID coming out of the Dec. 18-19 house shows. That was followed with rumors & reports about changes and back-up plans for the companies Holiday Tour.

We don’t know if all the changes that took place when that tour kicked off yesterday (Dec. 26) were caused by COVID cases, but we do know what they were. We also have an indication that two of the talents pulled from the show are coronavirus-related, courtesy of Seth Rollins’ weekly football tweet. Sickness, schmickness... a Bears win must be celebrated.

Becky Lynch and her husband were two of the stars pulled from the Raw brand show in Madison Square Garden on Sunday. Again, it’s not clear if the Lopez-Quins both tested positive. As Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer notes, some of the weekend moves were to prevent a further outbreak that could really jeopardize the Day 1 PPV coming up on Saturday (Jan. 1, 2022).

In addition to Becky & Seth, two of their planned opponents were also held off the Garden show — WWE Champion Big E, and Bianca Belair. Edge was brought in to face Kevin Owens in a steel cage match to replace the planned KO vs. E vs. Rollins main event. An NXT title bout between Tommaso Ciampa & Pete Dunne took the spot on the card vacated by the announced Lynch/Belair steel cage match.

At the SmackDown brand show in Tampa, Florida, Universal champion Roman Reigns was removed from the scheduled Bloodline vs. Drew McIntyre & New Day trios clash. McIntyre & Sheamus challenged for The Usos’ Tag titles instead.

It’ll be interesting to see how this impacts the remaining shows between now and Day 1, including tonight’s Raw. Most importantly though, here’s hoping everyone gets or stays healthy.