As noted before, Netflix’s international live broadcast of Friday’s WWE SmackDown show in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia suffered an outage issue lasting for over 20 minutes that was caused by a power outage incident in the city. This outage issue did not affect the United States broadcast version of the show due to the show aired on a tape delay hours later on USA Network.
Fightful Select reported that their sources stated that talent was made aware of the problems when they had happened and Randy Orton attempted to kill time by talking to the crowd. It was reported that Orton’s song then played as Orton walked around meeting fans. It was also reported that around 25 minutes after the outage problems started, Cody Rhodes came out and the screens began to work. Carmelo Hayes reportedly came out in street clothes to interrupt and got hit with a Cross Rhodes as part of the attempt to kill time while the problems were getting fixed.
It was reported that WWE officials retaped the segment between Rhodes and Orton for the USA Network broadcast version of the show that aired later that night. This is the reason why the footage and cameras used for the segment was different compared to the rest of the show that aired.
In a follow-up report, Fightful Select reported that one source spoken to confirmed that enhanced crowd noise was added to the USA Network broadcast version of the show and edits were made to remove several flubs CM Punk did during his live “Thuganomics” promo to John Cena. One WWE production team member reportedly described the day as being “unusually hectic” due to the technical setbacks during the live show and the added pressure of editing the show’s high-profile main event segment.
PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that his sources stated that several matches had their times cut from their originally allotted times due to the power outage issues early into the show. The specific matches that had their times cut were not given.
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