TULSA, Okla. — Cody Rhodes opened WWE SmackDown on Friday night at the BOK Center by saying he was medically cleared and ready to move forward. The night ended with Gunther choking him out and putting himself squarely into the Undisputed WWE Championship picture.
Rhodes did not have to wait long for his first fight. Ricky Saints interrupted him at the start of the show, and Rhodes gave him a match on the spot. Saints, making his first main-roster appearance, got a chance to make an immediate impression. Instead, Rhodes won clean with the Cross Rhodes and kept control of the moment.
Then Gunther arrived out of nowhere. After the bell, he attacked Rhodes and choked him out, a post-match ambush that changed the shape of the night. The move also marked a clear turn for Gunther after his time on Raw, with the attack pushing him into the title conversation on SmackDown.
The rest of the show carried the same edge. After Friday’s WWE Tag Team title match, Solo Sikoa and Talla Tonga attacked everyone involved and issued a warning to Jacob Fatu. The situation around Fatu has already spiraled in every direction, and this was another hard turn. The Usos came out after the warning, adding another layer to a family conflict that is only getting more crowded.
Jey Uso described the Tongan Death Grip as a sacred, last-resort move, a detail that underlined how seriously the feud is being framed. Solo then made the break with Roman Reigns plain, saying Reigns was not his Tribal Chief. That line sharpened the split inside the family and made the warning to Fatu sound less like a passing threat and more like a line drawn in the middle of the ring.
For Rhodes, the night began with a clean public reset and ended with his back on the mat and Gunther staring straight at the championship scene. For SmackDown, it was the kind of Friday that left one contender standing and another charging in behind him.
