We’ve known for sure since Friday that there’s some kind of viral infection affecting the WWE Raw roster, and that it kept Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt away from last night’s TLC PPV. That led to Kurt Angle temporarily joining the Shield and AJ Styles having a pretty sweet match with Finn Bálor, but larger questions about the illness still loom.
As of today, Wrestling Observer Radio is reporting that the viral infection is specifically the mumps, which had already been one of the rumors. Roman Reigns, Bo Dallas, and Bray Wyatt will be re-evaluated on October 30 to see when they might be ready to return to action. Meanwhile, the rest of the RAW roster was vaccinated on Thursday in the hopes of stopping the illness.
However, mumps has a long incubation period, with symptoms often not being present until more than two weeks after infection. That has WWE worried that more cases may still show up in the days and weeks to come.
There’s been no word on shots for the Smackdown roster, so we don’t know if management has any reason to believe the infection has spread that far. Fortunately this didn’t happen at Survivor Series, which Michael Cole informs us is the only time Raw and Smackdown Superstars can compete in the ring (don’t tell Finn and AJ).
Those who’ve been vaccinated for mumps can still contract the disease, especially if the vaccination happened years ago. That means it’s unfair to assume that those who contract the disease were never vaccinated, although cases of mumps have increased in the United States since rise of the anti-vaccination movement.
