The international broadcast of the June 27 episode of WWE Friday Night SmackDown from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, experienced a significant feed outage that lasted for over 30 minutes.
Approximately ten minutes into the show, during a promo segment between King of the Ring finalists Randy Orton and Cody Rhodes, the international feed for viewers on Netflix froze. Simultaneously, the large screens inside the Kingdom Arena also went dark, leaving the live audience temporarily in the dark as well.
Talent in the ring were made aware of the technical issues. To kill time, Randy Orton began interacting with the live crowd, with his theme music reportedly playing on a loop. After about 25 minutes, Cody Rhodes came back out to address the audience as the internal arena screens began working again.
To entertain the live crowd during the remainder of the television outage, an untelevised segment took place. Carmelo Hayes, who was in street clothes, came out to confront Cody Rhodes. The segment ended after Rhodes hit Hayes with a Cross Rhodes. Footage of this off-air segment has since surfaced online.
Fightful Select has asked for information on what caused the widespread technical difficulties. We are told the episode is expected to air as normal for the domestic broadcast on the USA Network.
This is just a snippet of the story. For complete details, please visit Fightful Select at Patreon.com/Fightful.
WWE informed Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton about the technical difficulties while Cody was cutting his promo.
It seems like the Randy/Cody segment will happen later in the show.#SmackDown pic.twitter.com/pwKMTHkABu
— EliteRockerz 𝕏 (@EliteClubS0B) June 27, 2025
