Leaked footage shows WWE stars stopped wrestling during advertising breaks on last week's episode of Friday Night SmackDown. The show was originally scheduled to take place in Detroit, Michigan, but was moved to WWE's Performance Center in Orlando due to coronavirus. It still aired live on FOX, but there was no audience in the building, making Friday's episode perhaps the strangest in history. The show kicked off with Bayley and Sasha Banks facing Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross in tag-team action and as usual, there were ad breaks during the match. But with no live crowd watching, rather than continuing to perform when the cameras weren't rolling, all four wrestlers just stopped to stand around instead.Check out the leaked footage, tweeted by journalist Sean Ross Sapp, below:
We're not sure if that's genius or just quite embarrassing?
As you can see, there's absolutely no wrestling during the ad break, with all four superstars just taking a moment to chill out in the middle of the ring.
Talk about killing the momentum.
But really, it does make sense for everyone to take a breather if the match isn't being broadcast during ad breaks.
Why risk taking bumps and potential injury while literally no-one is watching?
Due to the coronavirus outbreak, this week's episode of Monday Night RAW will also air from WWE's Performance Center.
It will be another eerie episode with no live audience to welcome back Hall of Famer Stone Cold Steve Austin.
The Texas Rattlesnake is set to make an appearance to celebrate 3:16 day (March 16) but his return will be rather subdued without the WWE Universe in attendance.
All upcoming episodes of RAW, NXT and SmackDown are likely to air from the Performance Center in the coming weeks.
But more importantly, WrestleMania 36 is now less than three weeks away and we still haven't had official word on if the biggest show of the year will go ahead or be postponed to a later date.