Word is coming in about a major backstage altercation that took place while the WWE crew was overseas in Iraq for Tribute to the Troops. Former ECW personality and WWE.com writer Joey Styles punched out former WWE Champion John Bradshaw Layfield, busting him open under the eye.

JBL is one of the senior members of the WWE lockerroom and has a reputation for being somewhat of a bully. According to several sources, JBL picked out Joey Styles to be the target of his hazing during the Iraq tour. JBL was messing with Styles all week, including calling him condecending names in front of other WWE employees and spilling a drink on him intentionally.

After a few days of abuse, Joey Styles had enough abuse and confronted JBL, who had been drinking at the time. The altercation turned physical and Styles dropped JBL with a punch to the face. Several wrestlers had to step in and break it up.

At last night's RAW tapings, JBL was unusually quiet while Styles tried to play down the incident and did not want to talk about it. While some companies would fire an employee for an incident like this, there are actually some people within the company that feel Styles standing up for himself might actually score him some points with Vince McMahon.