WWE SmackDown Notes: Joe Tessitore & Wade Barrett Fills In for Michael Cole & Corey Graves, Cody Rhodes Agrees to Drew McIntyre’s Demands for McIntyre’s Return & Undisputed WWE Title Match, 12/26 Show Card

Dec 19, 2025

Joe Tessitore & Wade Barrett Fills In for Michael Cole & Corey Graves

Friday’s taped WWE SmackDown show featured RAW commentators Joe Tessitore and Wade Barrett filling in for Michael Cole and Corey Graves on commentary for the show.

#SmackDown start now at the same arena at Hershey in Pennsylvania, Wade Barrett and Joe Tessitore on commentary pic.twitter.com/UHdpCINDZP
— FabiShow (@fabien_fichaux) December 20, 2025

The reason for Tessitore and Barrett filling in was due to WWE had taped this week’s show on Monday, December 19th as part of their double set of RAW and SmackDown tapings in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Cody Rhodes Agrees to Drew McIntyre’s Demands for McIntyre’s Return & Undisputed WWE Title Match

Friday’s taped WWE SmackDown show also featured Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes agreeing to all of the demands Drew McIntyre asked for his return to the SmackDown brand.

This was initially setup over recent months shows over Rhodes and McIntyre’s bad blood issues with each other. Following McIntyre interfering in Rhodes’ match against Oba Femi at last week’s WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event show, Rhodes returned the favor and attacked McIntyre at his home after McIntyre had negotiated a deal with SmackDown GM Nick Aldis. This deal was McIntyre would get his suspension lifted and would return to SmackDown but all he would need to do is pay a fine and apologize to the referee he had attacked. In return, McIntyre would get a shot at Rhodes’ title and the stip of Rhodes being stripped of the title if he attacked him beforehand. This deal was not made official at the time of Rhodes’ attack on McIntyre.

During tonight’s show, Rhodes came out to the ring and talked about McIntyre’s claims of WWE being an unsafe workplace environment because of him. This led to Aldis coming out to interrupt and talked about how Rhodes proved McIntyre’s point of WWE having an unsafe work environment. Aldis then reminded Rhodes of the terms of his deal with McIntyre including Rhodes will be stripped of his title if he attacks McIntyre before their match.

"Or I have to strip you of the WWE Championship."

Oh, @RealNickAldis is serious… 👀@CodyRhodes pic.twitter.com/Lk6gd5dflT
— WWE (@WWE) December 20, 2025

Rhodes responded agreeing to McIntyre’s demands and told Aldis that he is “The Law” around here and that he doesn’t work for Aldis but instead he works for the people, which he pointed to the crowd. Rhodes continued stating that Aldis works for him as long as he is champion and proceeded to leave the ring.