WWE News: Raw rating increases; holds steady in the third hour
What’s the story?
This past Monday Night Raw saw a slight increase as the WWE heads further down the Road To WrestleMania. The show saw a 4% increase from last week as 3.215 million viewers tuned in, which is up from 3.087 million viewers last week, as per ShowBuzzDaily.
In case you didn’t know...
Monday Night Raw was headlined by Bayley’s first Raw after winning the WWE Raw Women’s Championship, along with the main event of Big Show against Braun Strowman. Story lines were also furthered between Kevin Owens and Goldberg, as well as a sit-down interview-cum-promo with Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar.
The heart of the matter...
Typically there is a sizeable drop-off on the third hour of Monday Night Raw, but this week’s episode didn’t have that problem as it stayed steady with 3.127 million viewers. There are times when the third hour can see a drop of 500k viewers from hour two, so the WWE has to be happy with the consistency.
What’s next?
Next week’s edition of Monday Night Raw will be the go-home show before WWE Fastlane on March 5th. Goldberg will be on the show, so one can expect the ratings to remain strong. Chris Jericho resurfaced at a house show in Germany tonight, so there is a chance he could be on the show too.
Sportskeeda’s Take
The main event between Big Show and Braun Strowman was MUCH better than anticipated. Considering Strowman’s match with Mark Henry only lasted four minutes, it seemed like his match with the Big Show was going to have the same fate. Instead, we were treated to a great main event that lasted nearly 13 minutes and had a few great near falls.
Another item that may have helped the third hour stay strong was the Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn match, but it didn’t turn out to be much of a competition with Samoa Joe taking out Zayn once again, but they did a great job of creating interest as we head to Fastlane a week from Sunday.