WWE SmackDown in Saudi Arabia started on a bad note.
(Spoilers ahead for viewers in the US.)
Just hours ahead of the June 28 edition of Night of Champions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the Stamford-based promotion also hosted the Friday Night SmackDown tonight in the same arena. Unfortunately, as soon as the episode started, it suffered an outage.
Tonight’s SmackDown episode kicked off with Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton addressing their King of the Ring final bout. However, as soon as the segment started, fans across the globe witnessed their feed get cut abruptly. Netflix screens across the world played SmackDown’s ad break message, while fans waited for the stream to resume.
Soon, WWE issued an official statement on the malfunction as they claimed on X(Twitter):
To our international audiences watching #SmackDown on Netflix: We apologize for any technical difficulties and should be back up and running shortly.”
The outage lasted nearly 30 minutes, and the episode returned with the match between Jimmy Uso and JC Mateo, which was followed up by Giulia’s victory over Zelina Vega for the Women’s United States Championship.
Major Update On WWE SmackDown’s Return To Two Hours
Earlier this year, the Friday-night show experienced a significant transformation, evolving from a two-hour program to a weekly, three-hour format. However, following several negative reviews about the long run-time, the blue brand is now set to revert to its original format. A latest update from PWInsider confirmed SmackDown’s upcoming change.
In other news: Bron Breakker recently experienced a “humbling” experience.